


Hell Butterfly

by Alliriyan



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Epic, Gen, In Character, Multi, Plot Twists, So Much Chekhov, Tragedy/Comedy, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2017-12-31 15:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alliriyan/pseuds/Alliriyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate to the canon for those wanting more plot twists and less plot holes.  Hueco Mundo Rescue arc onwards. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Hougyoku breaks down paradigms: between plus and minus souls, between dimensions, between life and death.  At the zero point between the two, something lurks.</p>
<p>When Aizen stole Ichigo's little sister from their unguarded house, she met it.</p>
<p>When it met Ichigo, he crowned his Hollow King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overload

**Author's Note:**

  * For [All Who Wrote and All Who Read](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=All+Who+Wrote+and+All+Who+Read).



 

** ~o) Hell Butterfly (o~ **

**Overload**

**~01~**

 

_Dark void eye_

_Blinking open_

_Severs reality_

_Limbo path_

 

**o)0(o**

 

“Okay, okay!  All set?”

 

Standing before towering spires of rock under an artificial blue sky, three classmates steeled their nerves in preparation for the unknown future that was fast approaching.

“Looks like everyone’s finally ready.  Here we go.”

Kneeling down on one knee, Urahara rapped the base of his cane sword against his perch and gripped its handle tightly.

 

“My right hand is the stone that bridges worlds.”

 

He recited apparently senseless chains of words that called forth power – the art of demon magic drawing reiatsu up and out of his core.  “My left hand is the blade that binds reality.”

 

Sky blue flames enveloped his hand, channelling down through his zanpakuto Benihime and igniting the mammoth gallows.  Tessai nodded proudly from a distance, arms crossed high on his chest; sunglasses glinting with zeal.  He himself had designed and taught Kisuke this spell.

 

“The black-haired shepherd is hung from a chair.”

 

Bridging worlds to form a path between dimensions; binding reality so that the travellers were not torn apart in the void.  A shepherd to guide them to the correct destination.  It was a masterpiece of kido.  Few others could have condensed it to only four lines.

 

“Stratus clouds come, and I strike down the ibis!”

 

Though of course, some was just there because it sounded cool.

 

With a noise like a distorted power chord a seam appeared in empty air.  A slash cut through worlds blinking open into an infinitely dark eye.  The opening seemed to stare at them, and they felt it weigh down on their souls.

 

Soon that eye would become a mouth, and swallow them all.  And they'd go willingly.

 

For Inoue…

 

In all of their trials and bloody battles in this world and the next, she had been there.  Healing, shielding; preventing and undoing the kind of harm that others could only attempt to avenge.

 

She had been there.

 

And she was going to _stay_ there.

 

Yet although Ichigo was absolutely determined to rescue Inoue whether her kidnapping was voluntary or not, he had more than a few reservations about entering Hueco Mundo.  Besides it being an unknown land crawling with enemy Hollows, it was also the natural habitat of his own inner demon.  And waltzing into the pale bastard's home territory felt as intelligent as serving himself up on a silver platter to the nearest Aizen.

 

Though to be honest it didn’t really matter, nor did his misgivings.  Always he was aware of what Inoue had done for their sakes, to save them in the only way a weak human could.  And it was the exact same thing: stand before a mysterious portal into the afterlife where god knows how many enemies were waiting, grit teeth, and walk forwards for no other reason than friendship.

 

"If you want to save your friend, you'd better get a move on; ne, Kurosaki-kun?" jibed Urahara, interrupting the teenager’s musing and twirling his cane with the blue flame and skull of a shinigami on the tip. 

 

"Shut up,” Ichigo snapped bluntly.  "I don't see you heading into the gaping maw of hell."

 

"Ahhh, poetic, poetic, but totally inaccurate, Kurosaki-kun.  Hell-gates you should really recognise by now.  This is the path to Hueco Mundo.  A pseudo-Garganta.  Your ticket to paradise."

 

Sarcasm.  Always available to make a grim situation tasteless, just add geta-boshi.  He replied with a filthy glare.

 

“Ara!  Be a little more respectful, Kurosaki-kun!  This is a thing of _beauty_ ; a passage through the infinite spaces hidden between dimensions that are infinitely close.  Besides…it’s my way or no way.”

 

“Just tell me there isn’t a freaking ‘cleaner’ in this one,” sighed Ichigo.

 

Hopping down to the ground, the former Gotei Thirteen captain raised his hands and shrugged.  “I doubt it.  There aren’t any paths inside – only a constant, turbulent flow of spirit particles.”  He gestured to the drifting, swirling clouds of indistinct dust motes.  “So unless Aizen installed one, you should be fine.  …I hope.”

 

The three boys slumped.  They had incredible bad luck with senkai gates.  There was no way they would be fine.

 

**o)0(o**

 

Tia Hallibel, with her cocoa skin and lemon-yellow hair, made a dark contrast to the chalk-white walls of Las Noches’s barricades.  This the Vasto Lorde noticed as he crouched before her, glancing up occasionally.  He had arrived seeking entry, and at his level could easily gatecrash if refused…but she seemed confident in her ability to dissuade him.  She could also stand in his presence without the slightest flicker of pain, so he waited there, weighing her up.  She folded her arms calmly and stared back.  The guy had the mannerisms of a hyena pretending to be shy.  But he was therefore nothing more than a scavenger, whereas _she_ was a predator.

 

A long, shallow ravine had been scrawled through the sand of the bone-coloured desert, from its furthest visible horizon all the way to the tip of the Grande Menos’s tail.  The tail itself appeared to be nothing other than an elongated, bared spinal cord.  Like most top level Menos his body was armoured with a pale hierro – or in other words steel skin.  He was also bruised with the speckles and splotches of a wild dog’s markings all over.  At every other heartbeat reiatsu pounded out of him, more than he could control; and it was this power that had scarred the land everywhere he walked.  Constant clouds of sand danced around, disturbed by the Vasto Lorde’s presence.

 

“I’ve been hearing things…” he muttered, sidling closer to the woman.  “Things about an ‘Izzen’ and his little ball.”

 

“Aizen,” corrected Hallibel; “and the Hougyoku.”  Her voice was clipped and uninterested, yet mentally she was pleased at the spread of their leader’s fame.  A new Espada and a new battle for supremacy in the pecking order would make life a little less monotonous.  She was already looking forward to beating this newcomer into submission.  He seemed intelligent if one considered his behaviour a misleading act, but his reiatsu control was abysmal.  He was now standing in a small crater after the ground had been blown away.

 

“You got a pretty face with that mask broken off.  How’d he work that, your Aizen guy?”

 

She snorted.  The only part of her face visible between her low fringe and high collar was her eyes, and those were coldly condescending.  Though even that was more attractive than a jackal-mask scarred by immeasurable time and harsh trials, like the would-be intruder bore.

 

“So you want to join us and become more powerful…” sighed Hallibel, reaching behind and hooking her middle finger through the ring on the crossguard of her sword.  Her arm stretched out to its fullest extension as she unsheathed the short blade.  It had no centre, only an outline.  Spinning it with a jerk of her hand, the hilt fell into her palm.  “We’re outside Las Noches, so this should be fine.”

 

The hyena-man leapt backwards, skidding into a wary pouncing position at the base of the newest crater that his booming reiatsu had punched into the shifting ground.

 

“My name is Tia Hallibel, the Tercera Espada.  And only if you can survive this…”  There came an explosion of spiritual pressure that cracked the vast walls behind her before she had even begun to release her true form.  “Only then will I ask for _your_ name.”

 

**o)0(o**

 

“Ichi-nii’s vanished again,” wept Yuzu, garnishing that night’s healthy and delicious dinner with salty tears.  “Karin-chan!  Why is he never home?  Are we too young and annoying for him?  Does he…does he…hate my cooking that much?”

 

Her black-haired fraternal twin sister recalled the various times she’d witnessed their brother’s soul chopping huge-ass monsters into itty-bitty pieces with a humongous sword, factored in circumstantial evidence such as his being Don Kanonji’s spirit guide ‘Boy!’, concluded with the time she’d seen him burst straight out of his body and astral project with the help of some kind of gizmo; then rolled her eyes at her sister in mild exasperation.

 

“Yuzu,” she stated calmly; “Ichi-nii’s disappearances have nothing to do with your cooking.”  To illustrate this point she took a huge mouthful of food and closed her eyes blissfully whilst chewing.  Mmmm.  Yuzu’s cooking was the best.

 

The (much) more domesticated sister poked her rice and stir fry around with a pair of chopsticks.  Slowly Karin realised that her twin was genuinely upset.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” she said in the most reassuring and least sarcastic voice she could muster (it was a Herculean effort).  And then she spoke the simple truth: “Ichi-nii’s a zombie.”

 

Kurosaki Isshin wisely chose that moment to come charging into the room and totally distract the topic of conversation.  “Yuzu-CHAAAAN!  I have come to taste the fruits of your labour – good evening my sweet Masaki –” he blew a kiss at the poster on the wall; “is dinner ready?”

 

The only one of his children to take after his wife in looks turned to face him with a horrified and heartbroken visage.  “O-Otou-san…Karin-chan said Ichi-nii is…is…undead!!” she wailed.

 

Her father managed to look suitably shocked, but not for the right reasons.  Karin knew about that?!  Did she know _he_ knew?  Did she know about _him_?  For that matter, did Ichigo know she knew, and if he did, and she knew about _him_ ; then did Ichigo know what Karin knew about both of them and just wasn’t saying anything?  Or –

 

His brain promptly fried, and he gave up trying to figure out the implications of Karin knowing what she had implied she knew.

 

“Let me clasp you to my loving parental bosom, Yuzu-chan!  Don’t tell your poor, sweet, innocent sister such nasty things, Karin-chan, it’s not like you…and then she’ll cry, and then I’ll cry, and then –”

 

Karin’s patience snapped.

 

“If you can’t even _see_ ghosts, then you shouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand, Oyaji!”

 

They both stared at her, dumbfounded.  She was being deadly serious.

 

“Yuzu-chan, it’s exactly the same as when we were helping Don Kanonji fight the monsters!  Ichi-nii does that too!  And when that crazy guy goes on about knowing our brother, it’s because he’s met him as a ghost – and when Ichi-nii is acting _really_ weird he’s a zombie and he’s not inside his body!”  She laid her ace on the table, temper flaring.  “Haven’t you ever wondered why Karakura King is always in Ichi-nii’s room?”

 

“I thought that was Bostov…” Yuzu cut in.

 

“Karakura King _is_ Bostov…” explained Karin slowly, amazed her sister had never realised this for herself.  It seemed to be the worst revelation of the night.

 

“Bostov is a cross-dresser??!” shrieked the girl, throwing her hands into the air.  Isshin was totally lost.  His daughters were talking about the unknowable secrets of daughter-land, that Karin had always very firmly prevented him from intruding into.  He had no idea if any of Karin’s evidence related to anything real.

 

Wait a second.

 

Karin and Yuzu had been fighting monsters with Don Kanonji?!

 

“I…don’t get it…Karin-chan.  Ichi-nii isn’t dead.”

 

“I’ve seen him leave his body.  He’s done it right in front of me.”

 

Well that was clear enough.  Time to intervene!

 

Eyes catching fire with righteous indignation, Isshin loomed behind his dark-haired tomboy child with his fists raised.  “For trying to scare your sister with ridiculous stories…PUNISHMENT!” he intoned in a deep and terrifying voice.  He pulled up short.  “Oops, violence is how Otou-san deals with your brother.  Now then, beloved daughter, this is clearly a plea for more attention from your adoring-yet-busy-saving-lives Daddy-chan!” he proclaimed, throwing his arms wide in an attack-hug and pronouncing the last word in bad English.

 

Karin kicked him in the head after performing a remarkable flying leap to attain the correct height.  “Bring it on!” she roared, raising her own fists in a stance Tatsuki had taught her once.  “I can _so_ take you!”

 

“Dinner is getting cold,” said Yuzu quietly.

 

“Despite your being my darling little daughter whom I could never harm a single hair of, I must respect your personality choices, Karin!  So yes, let us fight…a battle to end all battles, a war to end all wars…a middle-aged man with a lifetime’s experience of Isshin-Fu versus his small, defenceless daughter…”  By the end of the sentence he was sobbing.  “This is totally unfair…”

 

“Yup, you’re gonna get owned;” agreed Karin.

 

“I take it neither of you want pudding,” whispered Yuzu, bowing her head in regret.

 

Her father and twin immediately sat down and began to eat their dinner in a civilised manner.  If the Kurosaki household had one golden rule, it was this: do not upset Yuzu’s family meals.

 

After pudding had been polished off Isshin suddenly remembered an important announcement he needed to make.  In the midst of all the drama and mayhem and declarations of war he had completely forgotten to mention it.

 

“Oh!  Daddy is going shopping for medical supplies tomorrow and will be out nearly all day, so he needs you two to be good and not burn the clinic down whilst he’s gone.”

 

“As if we would!” huffed Karin, licking the last crumbs of chocolate cake off her fork.

 

“And remember to ask the neighbours for help if you need anything.  And don’t invite any boys round.  And get your homework done as soon as you come in, unless you’re rebelling against the oppressive national education system; and don’t have any raves, and…”

 

“Okay, Otou-san!” chirped Yuzu brightly, if only to shut him up before he really got into his flow.  “We’ll take care, don’t worry.  And I’ll leave your dinner in the fridge if you’re back late.”

 

“Such a wonderful daughter!” cried Isshin, all choked up.

 

**o)0(o**

 

Aizen Sosuke lifted his fingertips away from the oily black surface of the now famed and feared Hougyoku, which had once been Urahara’s deadly secret.  He aimed a smile at his new super-soldier that was designed only to show his own self-satisfaction rather than welcome a newcomer into the elite.  Every time he used the orb it gave out greater power; as it matured, every new Espada raised the bar.

 

Though they were not all perfect.  Wonderwice Margera, despite having enormous potential, seemed to have paid for it with his intelligence.  Simplistic to the extreme, he had never been reliable enough to be awarded a rank.  But with this addition, the hierarchy of his Espada could be rearranged and he would be able to measure how much more power had been extracted this time.

 

A cube of crystal panes reclosed about the Hougyoku when he withdrew his fuelling reiatsu – at least double that of any other captain – and the large glass coffin encasing his latest disciple shattered into dust.

 

A long, thin hand slowly reached up, and Hueco Mundo’s most recently reborn arrancar started to tug the obscuring bandages from its body.  They were slightly similar to lethality stone in that they insulated reiatsu, allowing all the energy of the Hougyoku to be channelled into the target Hollow and stopping any from escaping.  It could not be wasted on flares and lightshows – the glass box being another technique to help achieve maximum results.  A mask can only be broken once.

 

Now the Vasto Lorde was dragging the clinging ribbons off of his arms and head, revealing bit by bit the person underneath.  Shards of white bone fell and clicked against the smooth stone floor.  Standing behind Aizen, Hallibel shifted her balance from side to side, feeling the suspense as her recruit unveiled himself.

 

“Tell us your name,” prompted Tousen, standing strictly to attention as the man who felt most keenly the ceremony of the situation.  “And the title of your resurrección.”

 

“…It’s been a long time since I had a name…” said the arrancar huskily, feeling the skin and mouth and eyelids he had not borne for decades.  “Been even longer since I had a face.”  His hair was a pale brown, the remnants of his Hollow mask rested on the top of his head.  The shape resembled a jackal as before, appearing like a crown in honour of the Egyptian god Anubis.

 

“My name is…Perro Rabioso.”  He curled his clawed fingers around the hilt of short dagger, showing a control over his abilities that he had previously lacked.  “And the title of my true form,” he unsheathed the blade and held it poised just below his opposite shoulder; “is _morder, el chacal!_ ”

 

It was like being hit by ten thousand sledgehammers.  An explosion of reiatsu thundered out of the arrancar’s body, blazing with blinding magnesium light as white as the sands of Hueco Mundo, the hallways of Las Noches, the mask of a Hollow.

 

Most of the Espada fell to their knees from the unexpected pressure.  Stark and Barragan seemed fairly unaffected but even they were wearing expressions of discomfort.  Ulquiorra and Hallibel had the presence of mind to negate the blast with ceros of equal mass.  The torrential force seemed to just reflect off Aizen.  His sole reaction was one raised eyebrow, and a slight tilt of his head.

 

“Impressive,” he murmured, the word lost in the noise of the storm.

 

Deep cracking sounds of the ground being ripped apart and the ceiling falling in made him sigh.  “Perhaps we should have told Rabioso about the ‘no resurrecciones indoors’ rule…” he noted to Gin, before realising that his right hand man was gritting his teeth and swaying.  Beads of sweat rolled down the albino’s face as his eyes went in and out of focus.  Tousen’s state was even worse.

 

Perturbed, Aizen re-examined the quality of Perro Rabioso’s reiatsu.  There was no control to it, and no end in sight.  An erupting volcano of white-hot lava.

 

Lifting his hand, the traitor shinigami captain shouted out the incantation of a high-level kido spell.  For an instant, a vast noir cage hid the overloading Vasto Lorde from view.

 

“RETREAT!” roared Barragan, the self-styled king, into the brief silence.  White shatter-lines began to scribble over the surface of the black box.  The pressure was building again, to an ear-popping level.

 

Sonido and shunpo emptied the chamber in the blink of an eye.  Seconds later, from a safe distance of a mile or two away; the group witnessed the collapse of the great dome in a column of colourless fire. 

 

Nnoitra crouched down and stroked the ground with his fingertips.  Pesquisa soon confirmed that the rare, coveted Menos was no more.  He had been destroyed by his own prodigious might.

 

“What a weakling,” snorted the Quinta Espada.

 

Ulquiorra dropped Inoue Orihime to the sand.  She squeaked in surprise then flinched, as if expecting punishment for the uninvited sound.  Yet she was ignored the moment her rescue from the collapsing castle was ascertained.  “Trash,” agreed Ulquiorra, turning away from the dust clouds of Las Noches with a bored expression.  “Is this what you consider worthy of us, Hallibel?”

 

The sole female Espada pressed her palm against his face and released a point blank Bala before he was even aware that she had moved.  He stumbled backwards, skin quickly regenerating although for a second his green tear marks had been replaced by the dark red of blood. 

 

“Know your place,” warned the woman.

 

Any retaliation was interrupted by Aizen tossing the Hougyoku carelessly into the air and catching it one-handed.  All eyes followed its lazy ascension and swift descent; mesmerised.

 

“Hallibel was not to blame,” he said quietly, staring at the sphere intently.

 

**o)0(o**

 

“You should make it to Hueco Mundo if you head towards the darkness.”

 

“Got it,” replied Ichigo, considering a moment before continuing.  “Urahara-san.”

 

The striped hat turned towards him, as did the eyes shadowed beneath its rim.

 

“Could you take care of my family for me?  Maybe say something so they don’t worry about me.”

 

“I understand.”  A strong wind from the portal ruffled his green haori as two differing air pressures between the two differing dimensions collided.  “And your friends?”

 

Ichigo dropped his head down slightly, looking grim.  Although the red mark had faded from his cheek soon enough after Tatsuki’s right jab, the bruise from his skull smashing through a window was still happy to remind him of its presence every time he moved his neck too far.  It was only a slight, dull pain.  He actually found it nostalgic that even after he’d challenged the elite of the afterlife and triumphed, Tatsuki could still pummel him the way she had since they were kids.  The fragility of his human body compared to his soul was far less humorous, however.  And damage to one was shared with the other…

 

“I’ll apologise to them once I get back.”

 

Then again, perhaps he’d never see his body again.

 

Urahara said nothing for a moment, listening to Tatsuki, Keigo and Mizuiro squabble quietly behind the giant boulder that was their hiding place; arguing why they shouldn’t leap out and hug their friend with a loud cry of “ICHI-GOOO!” as Keigo wished to.  Grievous bodily harm courtesy of Japan’s second strongest female martial artist settled the matter.

 

“I understand,” he answered the orange-topped fifteen-year-old, trying not to grin.

 

Ichigo clenched his fist, not knowing that Inoue had held it all too briefly; his mouth pinched into a thin, determined line, not knowing that she had hovered over it and left her tears on his cheek.  He shared a nod with Ishida and Chan, and then settled his sights on the Garganta.  “Let’s go!”

 

And they leapt.

 

**o)0(o**

**Blooper/Omake**  
to be known henceforth as:  
BLOOMAKE!

 

Or; the Arrancar Encyclopaedia.

 

**o)0(o**

 

Aizen swore, fluidly and furiously in a rare display of rage.

 

He had finally obtained a fifth Vasto Lorde, and the idiot was dead.

 

How demeaning to be killed by one's own strength.  He would make damn sure that his limits never visited him again, once God was defeated. 

 

But how was he meant to do that with the kind of progress that involved scraping bits of hollows off the walls?

 

Gin lurked in the corner of the room, wisely avoiding his master?  Friend?  Partner in crime? at a time when he was totally OOC.  "Geez," he grinned.  "Ain't no way in the chicken-frying south he's gonna put up with that happenin' again."

 

Well, at least one of them was behaving properly.  Tousen swept through the bright hallways, the only one who saw them as black, and searched for unjust hollows to lecture.  After all justice isn't kindness.  Justice is only what the strongest chooses for it to be.

 

Wonderwice totally agreed, shadowing the ex-taicho like an autistic duckling of doom.  He also thought that cooing was an Olympic sport and that butterflies were the best thing since sliced Bala.

 

Because Vasto Lordes were so achingly rare, Aizen was beyond furious.

 

“Szayel!” he screamed petulantly.  Soon the smarmy pink carnival reject arrived and knelt before him.  “Tell me why, exactly, my beautiful arrancar killing machines cannot godmode as well as a freaking 15 year old ryoka!”

 

“Huuuurm…….” hummed the scientist.  “Perhaps that Vasto Lorde had already reached his limits of expansion.  I mean it’s not exactly a common achievement.  Perhaps we need to find recruits who, like the Kurosaki boy, have an infinite potential for reiatsu.”

 

“Can you get me one?!” squealed Aizen, throwing the Hougyoku in the air and clapping like a giddy aunt.

 

…

 

They vacated the area and ignored him after that, trying to scrub the afterimage of Aizen dancing from their brains.

 

**o)0(o**

_Chapter notes:  Perro Rabioso is Spanish for ‘Rabid Dog’.  Morder, el chacal means ‘Bite, Jackal’._

 

_Alliriyan~*_


	2. Fallout

** ~o) Hell Butterfly (o~ **

**Fall Out**

**~02~**

**o)0(o**

 

Ichigo was running through a silver wilderness, and feeling rather positive about the dangers ahead.  For a start, he had managed to walk through that inter-dimensional rift without dropping Chad off the edge of his clumsy reiatsu bridge, which was quite an achievement for him even if Ishida did make it look pitifully easy.  And having arrived in the notorious pit of horrors Hueco Mundo, they had discovered it to be pleasingly empty and remarkably clean and spacious.  He’d been expecting it to be a pigsty.

 

After wandering the halls aimlessly for a few minutes, searching for someone or something they could pummel into giving them directions; he, Ishida and Chad had happened across two low-level arrancars.

 

Demoura was tall and bulky, his head scraped the high ceilings of the bland corridors, and he had seemingly been built on the same scale as a dinosaur.  Iceringer on the other hand had been compact in comparison, streamlined in a fashion; with random branches and needles sticking out of him to ruin the effect.

 

And then those branches had begun firing laser beams.

 

Typical.

 

But less typical had been the way both Ishida and Chad elbowed him out the way, refused to let him fight despite his being the strongest hands down, and then finished off each others’ opponents with ease.  Which had been a bit of a shock because last he heard, Ishida had lost all of his powers.

 

He was beginning to understand how other people felt every time _he_ powered up, after seeing the Quincy whip the spirit bow-equivalent of a Gatling gun out of nowhere and start turning the enemy into pulp at twelve hundred shots per second.

 

Ichigo would freely admit that he had gulped and felt extremely glad that he was no longer being targeted as a hateful shinigami by his bespectacled friend…

 

“Oi,” he asked suddenly, as they jogged over the endless dunes; “what was the name of your snowflake thing?”

 

“What did you call it?” demanded Ishida icily.  He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose for the thousandth time – running through sand is both too jarring and too soft, so it was a hopeless attempt, really.

 

“Uh…the spider web bow?”  Its name had been ridiculously long and overcomplicated.  It had also been announced in a cool, quiet voice in the midst of many blasting sounds as Quincy and Arrancar engaged in fiery laser beam war.  Who could possibly be expected to remember such a thing?

 

“You couldn’t possibly be referring to Lone Sparrow on a Silver Cliff when you utter such heinous words, could you?”  You would have to swallow an iceberg to match the frostiness of his speech.

 

“I dunno,” replied Ichigo blankly; “is that what it’s called?  The star-shaped bow?”

 

“It’s pentacular!” insisted the top student of their year.

 

A low rumbling sound emitting from beneath the thick wavy fringe of their overly tall amigo indicated imminent speech.  They listened closely.

 

“That…is not a word…”

 

“Unless you wanted it to sound like spectacular.  And if that’s true I’m feeding you to the next Hollow I see.”  You couldn’t trust a guy who wore capes not to have reasoning like that.

 

Ishida’s cheeks burned with embarrassed rage.  “I meant pentalateral.  No!  Quintescent!  Ahh!”

 

“Five-angular?” suggested Ichigo, with a rather mocking expression.  His pale, bookish comrade fumed.

 

“That’s even less of a word!”

 

“Why can’t you just use something simple like ‘el directo’?  Chad’s got the right idea.”

 

“It’s not like I have to shout ‘moon-fang slices the heavens’ every time I swing my sword, you overly-verbose ape!”

 

Ichigo tried to find a cutting rejoinder, failed, and settled for petty nitpicking.  “You don’t even have a sword!”

 

“I could if I wanted,” said Ishida mysteriously, the effect ruined as his glasses fell off during the next skid down a sand ridge.

 

They halted whilst the Quincy sifted around short-sightedly for his precious seeing-implements.

 

“Doesn’t Espada mean sword?” wondered Ichigo off-handed, scratching at the coarse grains trapped in his highlighter-orange hair.  “Chad?”

 

The foreign Goliath looked down at his first and best friend.  “I’m half-Mexican…not Spanish.”

 

Recovering his glasses and affixing them firmly to his face, for the next ten minutes at least, Ishida took the opportunity to show off his intelligence as well.  “But aren’t Spanish and Mexican closely related, Sado-kun?”

 

Chad considered this.  “The differences between Mexican and Spanish are…” he trailed off for several seconds, deep in thought.  Ishida nodded enthusiastically, eager for the answer, whilst Ichigo just shook his head and continued walking, knowing how it would end.

 

“…and that’s how it is.”  As usual, he had forgotten to say the middle before reaching the end.  His one-man audience looked less than impressed.

 

Ichigo waved at them from a fair distance away.  “Heeeeeey!” he hollered.  “Rescue mission, remember?  If you’ve got your bottle-bottom glasses then hurry up, Quincy!”

 

The uptight teenager nearly hissed.  “At least I can aim, Kurosaki!”

 

Breaking back into a fast jog, they regrouped and carried on their way.

 

There was a pleasant silence interrupted only by the huffing sounds of long-distance runners, until Chad volunteered an observation, a rare occurrence for him.

 

“It _is_ quite contradictory for a sniper to be blind…”

 

“Oh shut up; el idiota!”

**o)0(o**

 

Aizen studied the swirling surface of the Hougyoku, ink-black with the faintest suggestion of inner galaxies.  Not for the first time, he wondered what it was made of…

 

Urahara Kisuke was indeed a genius.

 

The Hougyoku was one of the most powerful tools in existence, yet it was small enough to roll in the palm of his hand.  It could grant unlimited power, yet few could handle such a blessing.  It was still growing in potency, yet it was already working too well.

 

Rabioso would have been a powerful asset, and Vasto Lordes were far rarer than gold dust.  The loss angered him.

 

But the loss of control over the Hougyoku _infuriated_ him.

 

The soft steps of Szayel Apollo’s approach made him clench his fist around the treacherous device, and turn to the door.  He made no effort to disguise his ire.  Perhaps it would inspire the Espada in his attempts to discover a solution.  Though of course, being who he was, Aizen had already decided on at least six courses of action.

 

“Well?” snapped the shinigami, when his disciple failed to open his mouth fast enough.  The yellow eyes opened wider in slight surprise.

 

“I have gathered the remnants of Perro’s reiatsu and analysed its structural flexibility –”

 

“I already know what you have _don_ e.”  His impatience was clear and his displeasure palpable.  The pressure of his malevolent aura was crushing.  Mere seconds of exposure left Szayel feeling wretchedly weak and feeble, as though his muscles were disintegrating.  “Tell me what you have _learned_.”

 

“S-subsequent supplicants of the Hougyoku require a…” muttered the scientist thickly, his quick mind trying to comprehend how a shinigami could overpower an arrancar so easily.  “A…certain deficiency of the soul…”

 

“How surprising,” murmured Aizen Sosuke, and suddenly Apollo could breathe again.  “That is not what I was expecting to hear.”

 

The arrancar straightened up and flicked his pure pink hair back; adjusting his glasses.  “Due to the dangers of exposing Hollows with great spiritual power to the Hougyoku in its current state, future transformations must be undergone by those at a lower level of evolution, or with a weak capacity.  However they are very likely to die of a reiatsu overload in the process.”

 

“These are things I am already aware of,” said his master in warning.  Stuttering a little, Szayel cut straight to the chase.

 

“Very rarely, there exist souls with apparently infinite potential.  As such they would be capable of absorbing all the strength instilled in them by the Hougyoku without literally bursting due to the pressure.”

 

Moving towards the centre of the empty room, Aizen placed the orb back into its green podium.  There was a tiny fracture in its crystal case; he had been gripping it so hard.  Taking a deep, soothing breath, the man released it again.  It was really not like him to be so open with his emotions.

 

Back in control of himself, he faced the Espada once again.

 

“Why do you consider this potential to be a deficiency?”

 

Szayel folded his arms, a thoughtful look on his face.  “It is something I first noticed when my older brother Ilforte Granz began to travel with Grimmjaw Jeagerjacques, long before you appeared in Hueco Mundo, Aizen-sama.  The vast majority of living beings have limits, no matter how high they may be.”  His yellow irises flicked from side to side in recollection.  “But when my brother and his friends ceased to grow, with only regression to look forward to, they offered their flesh to Jeagerjacques.  And he continued to increase in power.  Ever since that realisation, I began to study and research specimens of great latent ability.”

 

The Octava stepped closer to the shinigami, suddenly appearing very excited.  “I am not definite on how many there are, nor exactly sure how it comes about; but those for whom the potential is a deficiency are capable of bringing any volume of reiatsu under their control – because they have spent their entire lives subduing their own colossal spirits.  It is a defect as they are naturally under risk of a similar explosion to the one that Perro Rabioso suffered with his arrancarification.  But if they can survive themselves, they can survive anything.  Stark is one, though that doesn’t help as his mask is already broken.  Barragan might be.  Hallibel and Ulquiorra perhaps.  Nnoitra is not.  Grimmjaw,” he raised his palms and tipped from side to side slightly, a pair of scales weighing up a decision… “As he first made me aware of this trait, I am waiting to see if he shows it.”

 

“As you say, a mask cannot be broken twice.  Telling me the strength of my own Espada is not particularly constructive.”  He was not very interested in Szayel Apollo’s close inspection of his fellow arrancars, knowing perfectly well that the man’s precarious grip on his rank depended entirely upon gathered knowledge and the strategies born thereof.  His strength was his intellect.  Compared to his peers, his spiritual energy was paltry.  It took no great leap of the imagination to see why such a person would investigate the powers of others: in the hopes of duplicating them.

 

“Another candidate is that guy who recently invaded Hueco Mundo.”  The entrance had been so obvious that the residents of Las Noches had barely bothered to mention it.  If they had intended to go unnoticed then they were desperately naïve.

 

“Kurosaki Ichigo, yes.  But he is already a vaizard.  Although, considering this, I wonder if Urahara had another invention similar to the Hougyoku.  Only because Rukia was safely in Soul Society before the ryoka gained legitimate shinigami abilities.”

 

“He is a little unusual,” noted Szayel, treading carefully in case it came across as praise and angered Aizen-sama.  He need not have worried.  The other just laughed briefly.

 

“He always is.”  The ryoka had bested Zaraki and Byakuya just weeks after attaining his own zanpakuto, virtually captain-level from scratch.  If anyone was an example of ridiculous potential, it was him.

 

“He is not just defected, but also contagious.  It is something I have not found before.  But from studying their energy signatures, he affected and empowered at least two of his friends before reining in his influence.  Including our new…guest.”  He referred to their technically voluntary hostage, Inoue Orihime.

 

“Really,” stated Aizen in a bored tone.  This was nothing new.  He had already figured all these things out during the ryoka invasion of Seireitei.  It had served to fill the gaps between plotting and deceiving and pandering to that needy kicked-puppy Hinamori.

 

When the Kurosaki boy had stolen Rukia’s shinigami abilities, his reiatsu had been a chaotic mess – torn between two zanpakuto, one dormant and one a stranger – and far too huge for a child to control.  It had spilled out and infected those closest to his shinigami form: the ditz and the tall silent one.  And eventually Zangetsu had provided a proper channel, after which the speed of progress had been unimaginable.  But by then his friends had already exhibited their uncanny and unique abilities, born of a strange trigger rather than training in kido or through the slumbering swords in their souls.

 

It was simple, really.

 

“The contagion effect makes me wonder whether we could find a…potentialist similar to him from among those closest to him…” was the younger and now only Granz’s final proposal.

 

The former captain gave this some thought.  It was feasible, if one turned it sideways and squinted at it.  “Are you suggesting Inoue Orihime or Sado Yasutora?”

 

Flapping a gloved hand, Szayel dismissed them.  “Seeing as you have never permitted me to study the Hougyoku in detail, I cannot predict the outcome of using it on a non-shinigami or non-Hollow.  But Barragan would be able to examine other acquaintances of that pest and tell you whether they would be suitable.”

 

“Oh?”

 

He continued reluctantly, for he disliked revealing just how closely he had studied his arrancar rivals.  “His Majesty has a Soul Inspection talent.”

 

“Interesting.  I wonder why it is him and not you, my dear Apollo.”  As frequently was true, Aizen’s voice was condescending.  The lazy brown eyes hid a challenge.

 

The Espada fidgeted with his purple spectacles rather than meet that gaze.  “All things become clear with time, I guess;” was his cryptic response.

 

“Indeed,” said the shinigami smoothly.  Then he smiled, his usual superficially benevolent mood restored.  “That’s not his only extra skill, either.”

 

Szayel blinked.  What had he missed?

**o)0(o**

 

“Bostov dresses like a _man_ ,” said Yuzu mournfully.  “That’s _shocking_.”  She was measuring out the pattern of the pinkest, frilliest dress yet.  It was cunningly designed to cure the plush toy of all tomboyish traits, by force if necessary.

 

Karin flipped the page of her sports manga.  “I think he is a man, Yuzu.”

 

“What?!”

 

“Well…for one thing, he has a mane.  And he’s Karakura _King_.  And he always mysteriously vanishes whenever you get out your sewing kit.”  She was lying on her bed, flat on her back with one leg crossed over the other and foot bobbing in the air.  Another page was turned.  “I can’t believe Suki forgave him for bursting her signed football.  Who writes this rubbish?”

 

Yuzu went from 0 to tearful in three seconds flat.  If she was being honest, she would admit that she was a little too frequent with the waterworks; but then again with a twin sister who never cried it was necessary to balance the equation.  “Karin-chan…you doubt my womanly intuition?”

 

“Uh huh.  But we should just ask him.  He is alive after all.”

 

Hearing this didn’t faze the girl at all.  If it was indeed Karakura King, then they had already fought side by side as part of Don Kanonji’s Rangers.  The cheque was in the post to prove it, because the spirit medium’s ratings had shot up.  Nevertheless she raised her palm to her mouth and stage-whispered an argument.

 

“But Bostov is _confused_ , Karin-chan!”

 

Her sister started laughing.

**o)0(o**

 

The sky of Hueco Mundo was low, oppressive, and eternally black.  Inoue had not been here long; but she had already realised, staring through the small barred window of her cell, that the crescent moon never changed.  She wondered if it had ever waxed or waned, some instinct telling her no.

 

Chad, Ishida and Kurosaki felt the same way as they navigated the endless desert.  The moon was high in the sky, yet did not feel above it.  The night was blank, a black veil blocking out the stars.  If any existed in this barren dimension.

 

Sand.

 

Sand.

 

Sand.

 

Tree.

 

Sand.

 

Sand.

 

Sand.

 

Hollow gecko.

 

Sand.

 

Sand.

 

Sand.

 

Tree.

 

Sand.

 

Sand.

 

Sa-

 

“Are we nearly there yet?”

 

“Kurosaki, you can see as well as I can that we’re nowhere near!”

 

Ichigo sniggered.  “Yeah but your glasses are so thick maybe the castle looks closer…”  He face-planted into the sand, having been tripped up by an angry Quincy.  Coughing and spitting the crunchy granules out of his mouth, he stood back up.  Okay.  Maybe he had brought that one on himself.

 

“Look, why don’t I just go bankai and flash step there?  It would be a hell of a lot faster.”

 

Ishida punched his palm, inspired.  “Yes!  Reveal our presence to all of Hueco Mundo, waste all your energy before ever seeing an Espada and leave me and Sado-kun behind in the dust!  What an _excellent_ recipe for disaster!”

 

Ichigo threw his hands up in surrender.  “Okay, okay, I get it!  But can you blame me for being bored?  It doesn’t even seem like we’re moving!”

 

Chad, the only member if the trio looking at their surroundings, made an astute observation.

 

“Would a tornado help?”

 

“What?”

 

He pointed wordlessly at the hurricane tearing into ground before them.

 

“AAAGH!”

 

“RUN!!!”

**o)0(o**

 

“Aahhh!” yelped Karin, dropping her comic and covering her eyes.  Yuzu jumped at the unexpected noise and snipped straight through Bostov’s new frock.

 

“Karin!” she scolded, holding out the ruined garment in dismay.  “What was that for?  You jogged me!”

 

But her sister had rolled onto one side, curling into a foetal position around the sharp pain in her head.  She did not answer.

 

“Karin-chan?” repeated Yuzu, her voice softened by concern.  “What’s the matter?”

 

A questing hand reached out and grabbed the nearest pillow, picking it up and cramming it over the girl's black-haired head.  "I have a migraine," she whimpered.  "And my eyes have gone all jazzy."

 

"I thought the eye migraines didn't hurt, nee-chan."

 

Holding back the tears born from the sharp pain in her eye sockets and cranium, Karin reminded herself over and over of her vow never to cry and never to burden her family.  "Normally they don't.  But when they do...it usually means something is about to happen."

 

"Like what?"

 

"Like when Mum...and the night the truck went into our wall when Ichi-nii...or those times with Kanonji when the monster was too big and Ururu had to gun it down."

 

Yuzu felt a shiver go down her neck.  The sentences didn’t really need completing.  The words were not pleasant to voice.  "That's bad, Karin-chan."

 

The pillow nodded.  "But I don't feel any ghosts around.  Why would I have a migraine if there weren't?"

 

She didn't know it, but the answer was simple.  The invader was hiding his presence.

 

In the room down the hallway, a black seam appeared in empty air and began to widen, its edges jagged with angular ripples.  A strange bubbling roar emitted from the growing, expanding portal.  And without the faintest hint of reiatsu, an Espada stepped through the garganta and into the real world.

 

Karin began to shake.

 

"Yuzu-chan, I think you should leave."

 

"But you're-!"

 

"Go and fetch Oyaji!  Call the neighbours, whatever, just don't stay here!"

 

"I can't just leave you Karin-chan-"

 

"YUZU!" shouted her twin, ripping the pillow off her head and throwing it at her sister.  "RUN!" 

 

Startled into obedient action, Yuzu leapt to her feet and sprinted out the door and down the stairs.  Following suit, albeit far more slowly; Karin lurched along the corridor to her brother's room.  The plain badge on the door with its '15' logo shuddered and fell off as she tugged weakly at the door handle.  This kind of menace would take more than a football to finish off, she could tell that much.  The migraine was the most intense she had ever experienced.  And if she was lucky, perhaps she could find a weapon of some sort in her brother’s drawers.  That gizmo he had used to exit his physical body - would that work on anyone?  And if it did would she find herself with black robes and a sword as well?

 

Karin could only hope it ran in the family, and failing that swear at the universe until it caved in and submitted to her demands.  She had to find a way to fight the coming danger.

 

_She had to protect Yuzu._

 

She didn't want to imagine life without Yuzu, the way she had had to get used to life without a loving, adorable mother and a supportive, if kind of thick-headed and short tempered older brother.  He was gone so much of the time, and she knew the zombie-Ichigo who was a bit of a pansy and pretty rude and really lazy truly was no replacement at all.

 

But life without Yuzu wouldn't be life any more.  It would just be the dregs of a family broken beyond repair.  Not just because Yuzu was the domestic centre of the Kurosaki universe...but because she was the innocent one.  The one of them that forgave all other bolshie, argumentative and fight-picking members of the family.  She made it a home, rather that a fight club with free meals.  In her mind, Yuzu was far more indispensable than herself.

 

She made this building a home and haven rather than a hospital clinic filled with strangers and a small house attached to the side.

 

Karin must have been absolutely terrified, because all these thoughts flashed through her mind in mere seconds – permeated with an absolute certainty that the approaching Hollow was going to kill somebody.

 

Of course she didn’t want it to be her; but it just could not be Yuzu.  It just couldn’t.

 

The door slammed open; she shot into Ichigo's room and started to empty out the desk’s faded blue drawers.  There was nothing usable there, whether she could have recognised them or not.  No spiritual artefacts, no swords, robes, weapons, nothing.  Only pens and bits of paper with ugly rabbits and bears drawn on them (Karin ignored her brother's apparent bad taste in art for the moment, preoccupied by a very insistent sense of dread) and the odd strange souvenir, like a ribbon or a duck-headed sweet dispenser.

 

Karin abruptly stopped searching and just slumped on the bed.  She felt frozen, like the increasing pounding of her headache was cutting out her motor skills.  If nothing could be done, then it was time to run.  Ichigo was long, long gone.  Yuzu had hopefully run as fast as her legs could carry her to the town centre or somewhere where the crowds would dissuade attackers - doubtful when the ghosts were so conveniently invisible to most.  Their father was out of town on a shopping spree for the clinic with old friends.  The only other dependable person she could think of was Tatsuki; who wasn't spiritually aware, as far as she knew.

 

Or that Toushiro kid, but the chances of him popping up at the perfect moment were waaay less than a million to one.

 

"Shit," gasped Karin, clutching her throbbing head.  "Shit.  It's getting closer."

 

The plain wooden door, not the sort designed to conceal or reveal horrors, opened for a second time.  When the frightened child's black eyes looked up at him in terror, the arrancar was surprised.  His ability to hide his reiatsu was near enough perfect, as should be expected from one of his great stature.   Yet there she was, staring at his weathered tanned skin and bone crown; and trying her hardest to scrabble away over the unmade bed and leap out of the nearest window.  Pointless.

 

Barragan scrutinised the small, frail form of the human.  Trash.  Utter trash.  But he could indeed see the flawed signs that Szayel had instructed him to look for.  The rust on the Chain of Fate.  The brittle quality of the Soul Sleep.  The promising little defects in the soul of this Plus, who was currently so weak as to be a dust mote to his mountain.

 

It was just as well he had disguised his presence.  Even his normal, stationary level of reiatsu would have crushed her. 

 

Striking out with a swift fist, he knocked her away from the window frame and onto the carpeted floor in an instant.  The trash wailed and clutched at her head, staggering to her feet again in a futile attempt to dodge around his impeding presence.

 

"I do not know why that Aizen wants a soul like yours,” admitted the demon, his manner disparaging; “but I can at least be thankful I found you straight away.  I do not wish to be in this disgusting, thin air any longer than I have to."  He raised one of those bruising hands for a second time.

 

"Ichi-nii!  Oyaji!  Yuzu!" shrieked the girl, panicking.  "Help me!  HELP-!"

 

He cuffed her soul out of her body with a single blow, just to make her shut up.

 

The small ragdoll corpse split in two, both flying in opposite directions to land in a crumpled heap.  Barragan Luisenbarn snarled; this was taking too long.  "Stand before me, you maggot.  Your new sovereign demands it."

 

A long, clinking chain spooled out in the gap between spirit and matter.  Karin just blinked at it, slipping into shock with the slow sensation of drowning.  What was that?  Why was it attached to her, and why was her body on the other side of the room, over there?  How could she see if her eyes where over there?

 

"Uh....ah....I.....uh..." stuttered the child.

 

The king of Hueco Mundo pulled her to her feet, drawing his sword.  Looming over her timid and petrified soul, he released a whisper of reiatsu, just enough for the purpose.

 

Out in the street, Yuzu felt it, and started screaming for help at the bewildered passers-by.

 

Karin had been right.

 

Death had come.

**o)0(o**

 

Isshin waved a cheerful hand at his long time friend and long time I'll-put-up-with-him-if-I-have-to acquaintance, as he approached the sunny cafe table from a distance.  Urahara looked quite pleased to see him, tipping his hat like one would doff a cap.

 

Ryuuken just glared.

 

Unless he was squinting in the bright autumn sunshine.  Ishhin hoped that was the case, at least.

 

"Yo!" he greeted his fellows, waving at them again.

 

"Just sit down and shut up.  I don't want you drawing attention to us.  If we three are seen together in public..."

 

"By who?" interrupted Urahara, and his carefree nature was almost equal to that of Isshin himself.  "There are perhaps two people in all the world and only a handful from the afterlife that could derive any scandal from us having an innocent rendezvous."

 

"I don't care," stated Ryuuken quite clearly; raising his hand to halt Urahara's babbling in the manner of a highly paid consultant who is used to being obeyed.  "What concerns me is that my son has once again run off with this idiot's spawn and put himself in danger.  Into Hueco Mundo!"

 

"I know," replied Urahara blithely.  "I sent them there."

 

"And for that I'm going to make you pay the bill."  This was no small threat.  The cafe they were visiting was extremely expensive, and for that it promised them a private conversation.  It would also serve them all the green tea, sake and Red Bull they needed to tolerate each others’ company.

 

"Hai, hai~" chirped the inventor, grocery-store owner and architect of Aizen's apocalypse proudly. 

 

"Uryuu is such a fool," lamented the sewing-fanatic’s father, always only too happy to berate his offspring.  The others at the table had not even asked how life was going for him before he launched into another complaint.  "He thinks he's a genius, and I'll admit he has talent far beyond that of the majority of his forefathers, but his recklessness is atrocious!  He lost his powers in the space of three months!  What kind of intellect achieves that, may I ask?"

 

Isshin was inclined to disagree.  "I think that our boys are quite heroic.  He did take down the bankai of Kurotsuchi, which is an astounding feat for someone who had already been stabbed by that evil little Ashizogi Sushi of his."

 

"I think you got the name wrong, Kurosaki-kun..." noted the geta-boshi.

 

"On purpose, yes!  But putting that aside, we all know that Ryuuken here is just jealous of my little Ichigo, ha ha ha!"

 

"What?"  The white-haired man downed his small cup of sake.  If he did not keep his hands occupied they would soon be clenching Kurosaki’s neck.

 

"Don't try to deny it, you miserable old sod!  Ichigo has boasted more power than Zaraki AND Byakuya in a single outing!  He kicks your kid’s pansy sewing club ass!  He's a gem, if he'd just come home at the proper times."

 

"Your priorities need a little tweaking, my old friend."  This jibe came from the wise old mouth of Kisuke.  Isshin pouted, trying to look hurt.

 

"I can schedule you for a lobotomy next month.  I'll fast track you," promised Ryuuken, a dangerous edge in his voice.

 

"The old-fashioned way, with an ice pick and a mallet?  No thanks mate."

 

"I can't believe you would even dare to suggest I was jealous of that brat of yours.  The way he flings his reiatsu around is atrocious!  He would not be able to master a single kido spell in a thousand years!  With the same amount of energy Uryuu would be able to extract powers ten times more efficient!"

 

"Te-ten times?!  Isn't that taking it a little far?" spluttered the formerly proud father.

 

"No...." said Urahara slowly.  He picked at his nails, pretending that the dirt caught beneath them was more interesting than Isshin's enraged expression (which he was sure would be hilarious, hence he couldn't look up until he had finished his sentence for fear of bursting into laughter,  that not being very sly or subtle). "Actually Kurosaki-kun is still failing to reach his full potential, and I'm not talking about further power-ups.  A lot of his energy is wasted, leading him to use more.  And those mistakes are only forcing him to draw more power from the seat of his soul."  Kisuke looked at Isshin steadily.  "I know I do not need to warn you of the dangers inherent in such damaging progress, Kurosaki-kun."

 

"Says the guy who made my son a vaizard!"

 

"Did you want him to return home or not?  A shinigami cannot sustain a living body."

 

“Assuming he _can_ come home.”  Isshin suddenly burst into tears, his energy drink kicking in and exaggerating his emotions.  “Our babies have gone out to _die_!”

 

Ishida sneered, crossing his arms and leaning back in his wicker chair.  “Why should we care?  They were both too impatient to become _true_ warriors from the start.  They don’t know their own limits and just burn themselves out.”

 

“Aha!” cheered the head of the Kurosaki family.  “I’m a better dad than you!  I win the rivalry!”

 

“I never saw you as worthy of being my rival.”

 

Kisuke just sipped his tea and tried to keep his smiles to a minimum.  Failing that, at least to make them appear mocking.  He had a reputation to upkeep; it just wouldn’t do to show how much he genuinely enjoyed these secret café powwows.

 

“And I’m only alive because you swore the Hippocratic Oath, blah blah blah,” finished Isshin.  “Though I wonder how you expected your son to become both strong and prudent by ignoring him.”

 

It hit a deeply buried nerve.  “Am I supposed to coddle him, like you?!”

 

“Pshht.  I take great pride in beating Ichigo up every morning.  It hones his instincts.  When he’s at home that is; and not off saving damsels, defeating captains, learning bankai – that kind of thing.”

 

“Imbecile,” muttered Ishida Senior, returning to his sake.

 

The ex-captain in the green-striped hat finally chose to speak.  “Ishida-san.  You coddled your son by not teaching him to be a true Quincy.  Did you think the training would break him?”

 

The alcohol disappeared down the doctor’s throat.  He led a teetotal lifestyle for the most part.  The unfamiliar liquid burned when he swallowed.  “I was committed to the hospital and saving lives.  His grandfather-”

 

“Trained him against your wishes,” interjected Urahara, cutting him short.  “You are too vain, Ishida-san.  You keep trying to carry all the histories of the Quincy tribe on your shoulders alone.”

 

Kurosaki joined in, jumping on the bandwagon.  “And your deluded Quincy pride!  You’re _so proud_ to be the last one that you’d rather see your child die than relinquish the title!”

 

Ishida Ryuuken stood up with violent speed, knocking over Urahara’s tea.  Boiling water spilled in all directions.

 

“Allow me to correct you, my dear shinigamis.”  He was trembling with barely-controlled rage.  “I am in fact the only Quincy who does not wilfully ignore the wider consequences of our actions.”

 

It was their turn to fall into a stunned silence.

 

“The truth is: I wish for our heritage to end completely.”

**o)0(o**

 

**Bloomake!**

_Shinigami Cup: Golden!_

**o)0(o**

 

Kon snuck into the girls’ room, on a mission to find scissors.  Yuzu had stitched an enormous daisy to his mane a week ago and it needed to be removed before it sucked away all of his sanity.

 

It hadn’t been pretty when it happened to Chappy, and hell if this soul candy was going to suffer the same mistakes.

 

However, as he stealthily advanced upon the sewing box, he caught sight of a manga that had fallen to the floor.  It was about football.  Ooh.

 

Minutes later a dark shadow fell over him.  As a joyous cry of delight rang out, he realised it had all been a trap. 

 

“Bostov!”

_Curses._

**o)0(o**

 

Ichigo thought being trapped in a whirlwind of sand was bad enough, but of course Ishida could always be counted on to make such misfortunes even more unbearable.

 

In the midst of the dizzying, tumbling dust storm, a hand latched onto his arm and the archer yelled something in his ear.

 

“WHAT?” shouted Ichigo, receiving a mouthful of grit for his troubles.  “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

 

“PENTAGONAL!” screamed Uryuu again, giving his exasperated friend a thumbs up and a stupid grin before being tossed back into the maelstrom.

**o)0(o**

 

_Alliriyan~*_


	3. King's Burial

 

** ~o) Hell Butterfly (o~ **

**King’s Burial**

**~03~**

**o)0(o**

 

Being trapped in a tornado is a terrible torment.  There was sand _everywhere_ , in every crease of his clothes and in his eyes, scratching and scraping every available inch of skin.  Ichigo was pretty sure that it was his reiatsu-laden skin that saved him.  He could easily imagine a weaker victim being torn to shreds.

 

For the next few giddy, vomit-inducing minutes, he was tossed around like a strawberry in a blender and turned a pretty similar colour – the yellow of seeds when the blood drained out of him in shock, the green of the stalk when he felt sick; red when he was flipped upside down and the blood rushed back until he thought his head would pop.  Far too long after the point when he couldn't stand it anymore, a small flying object punched him in the stomach and sent him tumbling out of the windy grasp of the tornado. 

 

He hit the sands with a muted, painful thump. 

 

"Ow."

 

"Hahah!  That din't hurt as much as I thawt it would!"

 

Huh?

 

Was that a child's voice he'd heard?  He cracked his eyes open and blinked in dazed incomprehension at the green filling his vision.  There was something clinging to his head.  When he lifted his arms to try and tug it off., he felt little hands knot into his hair and yank it half out.  "OW!" he repeated, not as genuinely, but certainly more forcefully than last time.  "Let go!"

 

"Wassat?!  AH!!  Nel is stuck to sumfing!  AHH GETITOFFGETITOFFGEDDIDORF!!!!"

 

"You're holding on to _me_ , retard!"

 

The small fists opened instantly and his previously exerted effort flung the creature off him and into the drift of sand opposite.  "Hey!  Dat's not vewy nice!" squealed his limpet, flailing to and fro in attempt to undig itself from the hill.

 

Eventually, it tumbled backwards and he saw his adversary properly.

 

It was a little kid in a green hooded dress.

 

Ok.

 

Ichigo shielded his eyes with a hand and peered in the direction of the twister.  Just judging by the screams, Ishida was definitely still in there.  Chad probably wouldn't scream.  Ichigo had been on a rollercoaster with him just once, and instead of screaming the guy had just clamped his hands on the rail, clamped his jaws together and peeled his eyelids waaay back, creating an effective rictus of terror without the faintest peep of a scream.

 

Ishida, on the other hand, sounded like: "AAAAAHHHH woah woah woah woah woah woah woah woah woah ahhhhhhhhhhhh gah nooooo WOAH!!!!"

 

Stupid Quincy.  Ichigo had hardly shrieked at all.  Honest.

 

Wait a second.

 

A kid in Hueco Mundo?

 

Ichigo did a double take at the brat, noting green, lots of green, a red stripe that went over its nose and ended bulbously on each cheek, and very big, very innocent looking taupe-brown eyes.

 

_What on earth_ was a kid doing in Hueco Mundo?!  She even had a scar!  A massive, wrinkled swathe of scar tissue sweeping from beneath her green fringe down to the bridge of her nose.

 

Ichigo felt his protective instincts grow incensed.  Who the hell had dared bring a kid into this place and do that to her on his watch?

 

The girl - he was pretty sure - was staring at him, apparently coming to a new realisation as she gawped at his robes, sword and lack of a mask or hollow hole.  "You you you you you're not a hollow!" she gibbered, pointing.

 

“Nah, I’m Kurosaki Ichigo; Shinigami Representative and substitute guardian for Karakura town," he introduced himself.  Hopefully she would calm down, now that she knew help had finally come.

 

She hopped closer, prodding at him with a wavering human finger.  "You – you – you're a _shinigami_?!"

 

"Yup!" replied Ichigo, with two thumbs-up and a sad attempt at a good-guy expression.  His face was too naturally...furrowed to pull it off, however.

 

"YOU'RE A BAD GUY!" she wailed morbidly, clutching her head in a tragic pose like the Scream and causing the hood to fall off.

 

And reveal a deeply cracked skull mask.

 

Ichigo breathed in sharply; flinched back a little.  The child was a Hollow?  Children could become Hollows?!  That was just...tragic...

 

"You're," repeated the girl, teary eyes huge and gap-toothed mouth aghast.  Her hand patted him again, as if making sure the nightmare was real.  "YOU'RE IT!" she whooped, slapping his arm and pelting away across the sands back towards the tornado.  "DONDOCHAKKAAAA!" she yelled, some kind of mad war cry.  “WAIT FOR MEEEEE!”

 

"Oi..." sighed Ichigo, levering himself upright on the uneven ground.  He would try to make sense of this development later.  "What's a Dondochakkaaaa?" 

 

Seeing as he too had business with the whirlwind, he started to trot after the little Hollow girl.  She turned round slightly, gawked at him and began to sprint.  "Don't chase me, evil shinigamiiiii!" she squealed.  "I don' wanna be It!"

 

The screams and the spinning sands drew closer and louder.  Ichigo peered at it, intent on finding his friends.  "CHAAAAAD!  IIIIISHIDAAAA?"

 

"Yes?" replied the polite, cultured tones of the top student, fittingly from the top of the twister.  Ichigo face-faulted as he caught sight of the guy.  He looked like he was surfing.

 

"How are you doing that?!" blurted out the redhead, sounding far more impressed than he had intended; which would probably lead to Ishida lording it over him for the next few days.

 

"Can't you tell, Kurosaki?" shouted back the windsurfer, one hand elegantly pinning his glasses to his face out of the teeth of the gale, the other hand clinging on to Chad's belt.  In a second or two his arm was going to give out and it was going to be very painful for the both of them.

 

"This sandstorm isn't natural!  It's powered by reiatsu!" shouted Ishida.  "I'm using my famous Quincy 'flying curtain' technique!  Because I'm aweso-" his next words were censored by a gob full of sand.

 

"Ne...Shouldn’t that be 'flying carpet'?" asked a sneaky, light voice from below him.  He looked down in alarm.

 

THERE WAS A GIANT WORM.  WITH HORNS.

 

In even more alarm, Ishida accidentally let go of Chad.  The long-suffering stoic was whipped away in silence.  As suspected.

 

"I'm pretty sure the phrase is 'flying carpet'!” repeated the voice; far too high in pitch to apply to the ENORMOUS SERPENT that was riding out the weather, too great a mass to be tossed around like the rest of them.  "Don't you think, Dondochakka?!"

 

"Sure!" roared another, cheerful voice.  If Uryuu squinted he could make out the forms of two smaller, vaguely more humanoid hollows perched up on the helmet of the worm.  He could pick out purple, white, and yellow with black polka dots.  His fashion senses shrivelled in dismay. 

 

"Ne, flying-kun!  Have you seen our sister Nel anywhere?!  She fell off!"

 

"If you lost her, why didn't you just stop this whirlwind and go look for her?!" screamed back Ishida, not in quite his right mind at that moment.  If he had been feeling okay, it would have been whoosh with the bow and zap with the arrows right then and there.

 

"Oh, we’re not making the weather," replied the skinny-sounding one.  "We're just stuck in it!"

 

"Oh yeah!  We should be screaming, Pesche, ya know?" gasped its big, jolly…friend?

 

"Right!  Off we go!  AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

 

"Woah woah woah!!!" screamed Dondochakka, or whatever his name was.  He made it sound like he was being spun at high speed.  In truth, the only person that was happening to was Chad.  (Who, incidentally, had just zoomed past on his fifteenth revolution.)

 

"Bawa bawa bawaaaa!" chimed in the snake. 

 

The hurricane stopped as abruptly as it had started, the powerful winds swerving to a halt                                                                                                                                                                                                                                and several tonnes of sand dropping to the ground in a great _whoomph!_

 

Chad crawled out of the heap like a newborn zombie.  “Never…again…” he croaked.  In his mind the sentence continued: … _not again.  I will learn shunpo.  I will achieve flight.  I will master the arts of channelling the winds.  But I will never go through that again._

 

Externally, there was a long pause until he uttered a simple “No.” with finality strumming from every vocal cord.

 

Meanwhile, Nel was running back into the fond embrace of a skinny purple Hollow in a loincloth, and a giant tiki mask with disproportionate arms and legs.  Ishida saw them clearly for the first time and shuddered.  Horrific combinations of yellow, purple, green and red between the three of them made the swiftest stitcher and dandiest designer in Karakura wish he had never come.

 

“Ne, Nel Tu,” said the worst offender in a whisper.  A whisper that did not know how to do its job properly, as everyone could hear it loud and clear.  “Who’s that fella following you?”

 

“Ssshh, Dondochakka!  Don’ let It hear you!” whisper-shouted Nel back to the oversized mask.  “I tagged him, and he could stwike back at any time!”

 

“Wow,” said the purple Hollow with a hint of awe.  Something about his tone of voice in general gave the impression he had delusions of intelligence.  “That shinigami camouflage must scare away a lot of the weaker Hollows.”

 

Nel’s little face broke into a very wide grin – so large it pushed her eyes shut.  “He ain’t camouflaged.”

 

The motionless masks of her companions managed to trade a worried look.  Their blank, empty eye sockets moved from Ichigo, to Ishida, to Chad, to Nel; to Ichigo, to Ishida, to Chad, to Nel – to – Ichigo – to – Ishida – to – Chad – to – Nel – pretty soon their eyes were spinning out of control.

 

“W-we’ll protect you, Nel!” they cried in unison, both leaping to her defence.  However, Dondochakka was so giddy he charged off in the opposite direction.  Eventually the little Hollow-kid had a solid wall of idiot between the invaders and herself.

 

“You guys…aren’t like normal Hollows at all…”  Ichigo had a huge sweatdrop rolling down his left temple and a strange expression. 

 

"Oh yeah!" said Nel in sudden surprise.  "We din’t introduce ourselfs!"

 

Ishida wondered if this was a bad thing: Hollows usually only gave their names to those they were about to kill.  Or, to be more accurate, arrancars did.

 

"WE ARE NEL DON PE, DESERT THIEVES!!"

 

"THE THREE SIBLINGS OF DONCHAKNOW!"

 

"SUPERHADOUKEN TRIO!!!!"

 

The intrepid invaders of Hueco Mundo could not quite believe their eyes.

 

"Bawa wa wa waaaa!"

 

“Oh!  Sorry Bawabawa, we didn't meeaan to leave you out…”

 

“Let's try again!”  Again, they struck poses of the ilk usually found in tacky Saturday morning cartoons.  Sooner or later the boys would have to admit this was really happening, but they clung to the last shreds of sanity and disbelief whilst they still could.

 

"NEL DON PE BAWA!" cheered Nel, doing a star jump.

 

"No no no, I thought we were gonna say siblings, capische?"  Tear tracks were streaming out of the mask's eyeholes.  Forming a huddle, the four Hollows burst into a heated argument.

 

The humans started to edge away; they didn't need any more introduction than that.  They would even resort to begging to prevent there being further repetitions.

 

"Frikkin’ weird Hollows round here..." muttered Ichigo as he made his escape.

 

"WAIT!" screamed Nel.  "We can't give an intwo like dis!  They're wunning away wif the wrong idea!"

 

"Well, uh, whaddyu suggest, friend?"  The following whispers, for once, could not be heard.  The ‘siblings’ nodded unanimously, and turned back to their…missing…audience.

 

"OIII  ITSYGO!" hollered the tiny girl, hands cupped around her mouth.  "Get back here, you uke!"

 

"WHAT?!" shrieked the boy, voice hiking in pitch.

 

"Ok go, go," prompted Nel.  They scattered into position, and then cried “TADAA!!” with one voice.

 

"The great Nel Tu-sama-chan, amazing awwancar of Hueco Mundo!!!"  She pointed frantically at her undisguised human features and the fissure in her skullcap.

 

“And Pesche Guatiche, super fly masked guy!”  He raised the flap of fabric over his right eye dramatically, though they were all too far away to see the significance of this gesture.

 

“And DONDOCHAKKA BILSTAN!! DONCHAKNOW!"”

 

"BAWABAWAAAA!"

 

The humans just stared, once again falling into a stunned silence at the horrific introduction.

 

"Guys, we’re in Hueco Mundo.  Is this some kinda joke to you or what?"

 

"MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY," thundered a voice as large as the tornado of not ten minutes ago.  The newly revealed arrancars screamed as a shadow fell over all seven of the assembled.

 

"Lunuganga is back!  Aghhh!"

 

"It’s the guardian of the white sands!"

 

"We're gonna get owned!"

 

A living mountain was drawing itself up out of the sand, slowly forming a glaring white mask beneath the battlemented peaks of its head.  It was not the usual skull-shaped visor, rather a humanoid face with glaring eyes and a moustache that formed a complete ring around the back of its cranium.  A vast fist hovered above them.

 

"I HEARD NEWS FROM LAS NOCHES THAT THERE WERE INVADERS."

 

“Yeah, what of it?” muttered Ichigo rebelliously.  Maybe he should just get ‘ryoka’ tattooed across his forehead.

 

Belatedly he realised this had been said out loud.

 

"Ohh, or Kurosaki, I could make you a t-shirt that says 'Ryoka without a Cause'."

 

"But I do have a cause!  I'm saving Inoue-san!"  The grainy guardian above them roared, displeased at being ignored.

 

"It's going to be beautiful," sighed Ishida.  “A subtle blend of reds and golds to match your hideous hair, and none of those clashing purple tops you wear, no sir."

 

Chad grunted. "I feel sorry for Inoue."

 

Ichigo took serious note of this and grimly hefted Zangetsu in one hand.  "Right.  Let's stop stalling and playing with these kids.  Time to rescue Inoue!"

 

"My god, you have such a hero complex, Kurosaki!" retorted Ishida, snapping out of his tailoring trance.  He summoned his spirit bow, and paused.  Wait a second.  It was _oct_ agonal…

 

**BOOM!**   Getsuga Tensho ripped a chunk out of the towering sandman Lunuganga, and a vast blue crescent sped away into the black sky.

 

The Hollow began to collapse.  Ichigo turned away smugly.  “Yosh!”

 

Guatiche sniggered.  “That's never gonna work, evil shinigami."

 

"Why not?  His head’s in half.  Look."

 

They looked.  There was no damage in the slightest.  Ichigo pointed with his massive zanpakuto in disbelief, gibbering.  “Wh-wh-what the hell is going on?  How did he-?!”

 

“He’s made of sand, didn’tchaknow.”

 

"WHAT CHEATING SCUM," rumbled the colossus, leaning forwards and lifting its arms.  “YOU HAVE NO MANNERS IN BATTLE.”

 

"Baaaaad guuuuuy!" jeered Nel from behind them.

 

"I WILL TEACH YOU TO SUBMIT TO THE SANDS OF THIS LAND."

 

"It was a fair shot!" insisted Ichigo; firing again with the black blade.

 

Lunuganga’s fist left a sizeable crater in the ground where Ichigo had just been standing.  "Shit!" yelped the boy, grabbing Nel from reflex and shunpo-ing away.  But the ground was slipping away, sucking at his feet as he tried to escape.  The plains had turned into a desert of sinking sand.  Several metres away the earth was draining down into a vast pit, one that was expanding far too fast.

 

"We’re gonna get _puréed_." purred Nel, almost as if she enjoyed the prospect.

 

Ichigo skidded and the moving sands swallowed him all the way up to the waist.  He could barely move his legs to escape, the grip was so heavy.  "There is something seriously wrong with you, kid."

 

"I'm a masochist," she informed him, smiling proudly.  "Pain is my home slice."

**o)0(o**

 

Karin was kneeling before the arrancar king, like a subject who had been brought before him for punishment.  Her legs and arms were leaden, her head tipped back just enough to see a small prophecy of what was about to pass in the bedroom of her absent brother.  A katana had been unsheathed, the metal dull for the light feared to touch it.

 

Where was Ichigo now?

 

Where was the shinigami with the overflowing power to overcome all obstacles and threats?

 

Where was the One Guardian, the Ichi-Go, when she needed him?

 

The crowned man, monster, had placed one foot upon her still and lifeless body, holding the reddish ferrous chain that linked them in his empty hand.  She could feel electric charges stream out of his palm and zap along the chain into her heart.  It stung enough to bring tears to her eyes, even in her numb state of shock.

 

Now he was leaning down on his leg, pinning her physical corpus to the floor as his fist wrenched the chain from its core.  The toppled hostage of Karin's real body grew an ashen grey colour, twitching and seizing up before losing all tension with a sigh akin to a death rattle.

 

Heart-attack.  Recognised some part of Karin's brain.  I'm dead.  I didn't know dying was like this. 

 

You step out of your body before you feel the pain?

 

Pain, travelling up a fast-eroding Chain of Fate, hit her hard.  She nearly bit the tip of her tongue off; shrieking in a voice none among the living could hear.  Of rescue there was no sign.

 

"I-I-Ichi-niii...." she groaned, gasping for breath in the thin air of the spirit side, aware on some level that only he could counter this assault.  Yuzu and Oyaji couldn't see ghosts. 

 

Oh, but she wished her doctor-father was here now to take the hurt away, and she wished Yuzu could be there now to hug her and help her forget the things she had seen and felt...

 

"Don't die so hastily, larva.  Aizen-sama would be displeased."

 

Barragan, the royal, empty man, stood over her with a curled lip and cruel granite eyes.  "I am going to knight you, in a fashion," he snorted distastefully at the concept, but orders must.

 

"Yuzu..." bleated the tiny, twelve-year-old girl at the feet of the thousand-year King.

 

"I dub thee," stated Barragan slowly, and with grandeur..."in the name of Barragan Luisenbarn, King of Hueco Mundo," he raised his zanpakuto, though to her shivering confusion the blade was positioned hilt first.  "Under the authority of the Dark Konsou, by the desecrating touch of the King's Burial..."

 

The pommel glowed with a black and endless illuminance, etched out were characters that gave away the purpose of the ritual.

 

**Death Unrisen**

 

“Hollow,” he intoned, smashing the sword into the centre of her forehead.

 

There was no blood.

 

Only burning black kanji upon the pale paper of her skin.

 

“And thus the blade falls for a second time, under the name of a mask.”

 

No visible blade moved, yet she felt her heart cleave away from her soul and hide itself someplace where she could not follow.  As the dark symbols smouldered and sank deep into her skull, she felt overwhelming loneliness well up out of the void they left behind.

 

“No no no…” mumbled the lips of the delirious child, the last words she would ever speak as her mind and brain were eaten away by the devil’s soul burial; as she turned involuntarily into something that was not herself, and yet was her…

 

“No…no…I don’t believe in…no don’t…I don’tbelieveinghosts…”

 

Karin flopped forwards; soul as pale as the corpse in which her blood had stilled, surprised at the sudden halt of her heart.  Catching herself automatically on limp arms, she fell backwards again into stabbing rays of shadow matter.  The ground cracked open to consume her slight form.

 

All reality vanishing, she tumbled lifelessly into a black, pathless nowhere that slithered betwixt other stranger dimensions.

 

He watched the maggot sink through the floor into a mysterious place that only the unconscious soul could tread, dark shafts of non-light flickering around the surreally normal room.  There was slight curiosity in his small, aged eyes.  A konsou had never before been performed by Hollows, and as far as he knew he was the only one among the arrancars to boast the ability.

 

It made the theft and corruption of pluses almost…legitimate.

 

Out in the calm, midday street, Yuzu felt her twin vanish; and crumpled.

**o)0(o**

 

The coffee cup slipped from his nerveless fingers, spilling searing brown liquid down his Hawaiian shirt; Isshin’s latest hyperactivity-inducing drink shattering on the pavement into fifty jagged fragments.  He had been hit by a sour instinct.

 

For a moment stunned, he leaned down to pick up the pieces and slit his thumb on a razor ceramic edge.  The sting of the cut brought him back to his senses.

 

“I have to get home,” he said hoarsely, bolting out of his seat and sprinting away down the road, the café quickly left far, far behind him.  Belatedly feeling the faint, vulgar reiatsu in the direction of the Kurosaki residence, Ryuuken took off in hot pursuit of his one-time colleague.

 

“My, my…” hummed Urahara to himself, sipping his hot cup of cha with the cold realisation that they were already too late.  The spiritual presence was barely there, and only masterful disguise of aura could explain the Espada-strength nausea induced by something so weak.  Yet he did not panic, nor make any attempt to move to the rescue of his old friend’s children.  Hundreds of years’ service in the Gotei 13 had taught him to cut his losses and move on without hesitation.

 

But then again, if he was there…maybe they wouldn’t be too late.

 

Pulling a custom Soul Candy dispenser out of his haori (it had a cute black kitten face on top), Kisuke popped a pill and burst out of his body with the café staff none the wiser.

 

“Pay the bill, would you?  Oh!  And buy us some muffins for later.  Ja ne…” chirped the shinigami to the faux soul, disappearing from view in a single flash step.

**o)0(o**

 

“AAAGH!  WE’RE GONNA GET MASTURBATED!” screamed the tiny green-haired arrancar.

 

“Don’t you mean masticated?” asked Pesche, shouting to be heard over the tidal roar of the quicksand.

 

There was a brief, un-forecasted blizzard.  Lunuganga froze, and more importantly, so did the deadly downwards slide of his antlion’s trap.  The Hollows cheered wildly.  The humans just scrambled to get away from the danger zone.

 

Rukia watched Ichigo approach with an uncharacteristically happy look on his face.  Was that aimed at her?  For saving him from the big nasty hollow?  Or was it just that he was pleased to see an ally.  The reason didn't matter.  Because no matter what, as soon as he came within striking distance she was going to -

 

_WHAM_

 

The heel of her palm connected with his chin, snapping his head back and making him give a cry of pain.

 

"OW!" he yelled. "What was that for?!"  Backing away, he rubbed his new bruise.  That had _hurt_.

 

In reply, Rukia merely tagged Renji with a simple high-five.  The tall man gleefully stepped forwards and introduced his own fist to the strawberry's stomach.

 

"Hwerk!" choked Ichigo, folding in half.  "I don't get it..."

 

"Are you stupid?!" snapped Rukia, shouting in her angry-tirade-voice that she had been born with but polished to perfection in the haughty Kuchiki household.  "Why did you leave without us?  Why didn't you wait for us to come back?  If you knew us at all you should have realised we would find a way to come and help Inoue.  Do you really think you are the only person here who owes her a rescue?"

 

"Sorry," apologised Ichigo, now tending to two bruises.  "You'd been called back by the Soutaicho, and seeing as both of you have always seemed pretty obedient to the old guy - up to and including your own execution, Rukia - I figured you wouldn't be back any time soon.  What did he say?  'This is a time of war, ryoka, we cannot waste resources!' or something..."

 

"He doesn't call you ryoka anymore," chided Rukia, to which the carrot-top just shrugged.  "And to give a living teenager the soul reaping powers of a...somewhat older...graduated shinigami _is_ illegal.  In fact the only injustice of that execution was the method."

 

"Whatever..." sighed Ichigo.  He didn’t seem sufficiently chastised, so Renji tagged Rukia again, and she walloped Ichigo, again.

 

"Next time, have a little faith in us, and never force me to say something so pathetic-sounding again!"

 

Wincing, the Kurosaki boy nodded his full agreement and backed out of range.  "Ok, ok..."  He tried to look pitiful.

 

"Now who are these weirdoes - mmmph!"  The two shinigami had been gagged in 0.2 seconds.  "Don't ask for their names!" insisted Ishida in a terrified hiss.  "Or they'll really tell you!"

 

"But," Renji spat out Chad's hand with a grimace; "why are you hanging out with Hollows?"

 

Nel heard him and jumped up and down excitedly.  "We gonna lead you guys to Las Noches!"

 

"We didn't even tell you we were going there..." said Ichigo, accusing.

 

"Well there's nowhere else round here worth seeing."

 

Rukia frowned.  "Point.  But then why do we need you as a guide?  We can see where it is from here."

 

"Aha," said the child quickly, "but d’you know where the doors are?  Plus Bawabawa is reeeally fast at twavelling through sand."

 

The invaders brightened up a little.  A free ride sounded extremely tempting right about now.  Above and behind them, the vast iceberg formally known as Lunuganga began to crumble and subside back into the dunes. 

 

"Nice cape, Kuchiki..." noted Ishida, twitching his glasses so that they flashed spookily.  It was a talent that had to be worked at to fully perfect. 

 

Rukia looked up at his admiring tone.  "Ah, yes...um...Nii-sama gave it to me," she admitted, blushing slightly at the rare attention from her stoic brother.  "He said it would protect from the sand and desert winds."

 

EHHH??!

 

Their faces were pictures.  She only wished her Soul Cell Phone had a camera attachment.

 

"Woah," said Ichigo in a disbelieving tone, some seconds later.  "Your brother's really mellowed."

 

"He gave one to Renji too, but was far more begrudging."

 

"Maybe he didn't want to encourage his fukutaicho to leave at such an important time," said the spiky-haired redhead defensively.

 

Rukia's reply was arch and cutting.  "Then you should be a little more concerned about abandoning your responsibilities, ne Renji?"  She broke into a cruel laugh as he sank into a deep depression.

 

"I can't win...I can never win..." he sobbed.  They clucked their tongues at him sympathetically, holding back grins.

 

"SO!" shouted Nel, feeling the centre of attention had not been her for long enough.  "Let's get goin-AAAHHHHhhhhhhh........."

 

The ground had vanished.  In moments, too few to react, the entire group were plummeting into a deep underworld beneath the dunes, as the sand poured away like the timekeeping of a giant's hourglass.

 

The Hueco Mundo desert returned to its former pristine, empty state.  Rising up, the Guardian of the White Sands let loose a mocking laugh.  “LEARN YOUR PLACE,” roared Lunuganga, although his victims were gone.  “TRASH CAN NOT RESIDE UNDER THIS SKY, AND LUNUGANGA IS IMMORTAL!”

**o)0(o**

 

Lunuganga may have been immortal, but Kurosaki Karin was not.  Kurosaki Karin was mortal, and her end had already visited her.

 

Isshin did not know whether her death had been premature, or whether this was fate.  He only knew that he had not been at home during this dangerous time.  He was perhaps one of a mere handful who knew that there was a spiritual war raging on the other side of existence, beyond the barrier of the air.

 

Why had he not thought?

 

Why had he underestimated…war?

 

Why had Karin been alone when she needed him?

 

Picking up Yuzu, who seemed to have shrunk back to the baby he had held on her first day of independent life; and holding her tight…was all he could do now.  Bury her face in her father’s chest. Shield her eyes from that which they had already seen and had cauterised into her memory.

 

He didn’t allow himself the same safety in the darkness behind closed eyelids.  He stared down at his dead daughter, clinging to the only child left within his reach; the tears caught too unawares to know they should have been streaming down his face in a Niagara Falls of grief.

 

He’d seen this before.  Oh, yes, he had seen this many times before; be it strangers in the clinic or close friends and comrades in the long-abandoned past.  Most of them older, but some just as young.  Just as small and defenceless.

 

He thought he had known anguish, but oh, nothing had carved his insides out and left him this empty since Masaki…

 

Masaki…

 

Since Masaki was murdered by the Grand Fisher…

 

Yuzu shuddered inside the numb circle of his arms.  He did not want to imagine how much worse this might be for her, with her innocence and unguarded emotions. 

 

_Without her twin._

 

A twin, even fraternal, being one of the closest relationships birth could offer…if the twins born chose to behave that way.  And for all their differences of opinion and personality, Karin and Yuzu really had been that close.

 

No matter what thoughts entered and spun uselessly round inside Isshin’s head, nothing distracted from the most heart-rending truth.

 

Exactly the same.

 

Just as Masaki had died.

 

A Hollow, Arrancar, Espada; whichever.  The name did not matter.  All that mattered was that a Hollow had entered this house, the only civilian house in Karakura that contained two captain-level shinigamis; and for the second time, taken away a beloved family member; leaving them cold, limp, ashen, blue, stone dead and growing stiffer on the floor.

 

Karin…

 

Masaki…

 

There would be no summons to Soul Society for either of them.

**o)0(o**

 

_Alliriyan~*_


	4. Potential for Disaster

** ~o) Hell Butterfly (o~ **

**Potential for Disaster**

**~04~**

**o)0(o**

Inoue perched on a sofa that was only slightly too hard, wrapping her tense and fidgeting arms around the dress that was only slightly too tight; and the air just a chilly breath below skin temperature surrounded her unmovingly.

 

Hueco Mundo is an empty place.

 

No wind.  No sun.  No stars.  No daylight.  No life.  No plants.  No people.  No hearts.

 

Empty.

 

Hollow.

 

And these days it felt like her living blood was burning in her veins.

 

Why wasn't she as cold, numb, as bland as everything else in this place?

 

The taste of despair and hopelessness was pervasive yet stale.  The regret was there, but the Hollows had no reasoning with which to feel it.  It clouded the air, unable to reach inside the cores of those that generated it.

 

Inoue sighed as quietly as she could, and scrubbed her face with her palms.  The constant tension was exhausting.  She knew she was lucky, fortunate beyond belief to be left alone.  Trapped in this place of privacy, rarely or never requested to perform a healing by Aizen, and never experimented on by the greedy-eyed Octava.  It was crazy.  The food they forced down her throat was often far better than the mangled concoctions she lived on when left to her own devices.  And it barely seemed like she was hostage in the stronghold of the enemy at all…

 

Until she drew attention.

 

Certain that their patience could end any day now, she stayed quiet and obedient - "I will only serve Aizen-sama," - oh how disgusting.  Scared that a cough or a hum might trigger their attacks. 

 

And holding her tongue took a lot of concentration, because her mind wandered all the time, and she had been in the habit of filling her lonely apartment with sound when she was alone.

 

Whilst Inoue sat, and fretted, and feared; the rest of her mind followed random tangents aimlessly.  Sometimes resulting in a jerk of the leg or body as she imagined walking into a pit, a snatch of song whenever she forgot herself, and the panicked pounding of her heart every time she began to drift asleep.  As if her body was warning her away from dying during unguarded slumber.

 

Apart from healing Grimmjaw she had been given no tasks at all, bar aiding a few of the very minor Fraccion to rebuild the demolished areas of Las Noches.  Since her kidnapping, Inoue had been largely ignored.  At first terrified of being turned into another arrancar, she had waited hour after hour to be called to her doom.  But eventually it had become clear that the enemy’s interests were not in her personally.

 

The moment she had felt Ichigo’s turbulent reiatsu enter Hueco Mundo, far off but never feeble, she had begun to punch herself at her own stupidity.  Of course Ichigo would come after her.  _Of course_ her friends would never abandon her to the Hollows, just as she had never refused to join them when the going got tough.

 

 _Of course it was all a diversion_.

 

How could she not have realised?  Was she that retarded?  Yes, when an Espada had trapped her in the rift between dimensions, and dangled the lives of all her friends in front of her for the simple price of her obedience…yes, she had tried to do what was right.  But even then she should have realised…what was so _obvious_ now.

 

Yet, and she clenched her fist and jaws bitterly; after weeks of being prohibited from fighting and forbidden to contribute, after so much time being the only person ignored and full of self-derision for being so weak…

 

_‘Follow me, woman.’  And unspoken: Aizen-sama wants to study your powers.  And barely thought: your powers are special._

_And subconsciously: you are special._

 

Orihime was disgusted at her own vanity, despite knowing perfectly well that she had acted to save her friends.  The thought had come later, whilst she was shadowing her friends and saying her goodbyes, and being utterly too pathetic to kiss Kurosaki-kun without his permission.

 

_I’m not weak, I’m special._

_Not forbidden to fight, just being protected._

_To go to this trouble, Aizen must think my rejection abilities can swing the war._

 

If that had been true, she would have been better off committing suicide in that senkai tunnel.  Seppuku!

 

Though she didn’t have a sword for the disembowelment or a second to put her out of her misery after.  Perhaps Tsubaki would have done it, in two swoops.  He always seemed quite keen to beat her up.

 

Now she imagined the tiny fairy toting huge boxing gloves and looming over her.  She’d need to be even smaller for that to work, so she mentally screamed “ _eeeee!_ ” in a high-pitched voice.  In fact, the rest of the Shun Shun Rikka might take pity and stop the fight…at normal-human-size that would shock quite a few people…

 

Bugger.

 

She had got distracted again.

 

Maybe she should just commit seppuku now.

 

Inoue cringed at the thought, raising her fist for another punch.  A steel vice closed around her wrist and she jerked round to stare at the maudlin features of Ulquiorra in horror.

 

_I didn’t hear him come in at all…_

 

 “You are required to eat.  Do so.”

 

Ah but if she ate then the food would go all over the floor when she did seppuku.  Plus Ulquiorra probably wouldn’t agree to be her second; he only ever came in to check she was still alive.  Beheading her would be counter-efficient.

 

“Who makes this food?” she asked suddenly, forgetting to cower in the Espada’s presence as her mind ran away with itself again.  _And where did all the fancy cutlery come from?_   Even for her, it was difficult to imagine Aizen doing house shopping.

 

The white-skinned arrancar released her wrist and paused, wondering why she had asked.

 

“…Tousen.”

**o)0(o**

 

“I’m grateful that there wasn’t just more sand, but what the hell is this place?” asked Ichigo, breaking the silence after their unexpected drop to a gloomy forest floor.  Looking up from his spread-eagled position on the ground, he could faintly see a patch of light that marked the place they had fallen through the sand.  As the light slowly grew dimmer, he realised that Lunuganga must be closing the funnel again.

 

“What is holding the sand up?” added Ishida.  “Were all those stunted bushes we saw actually the tips of these trees?”

 

And vaster trees had he never seen.  The girth of some of them was great enough to dwarf even Bawabawa, making the enormous Hollow look like a common garden slug in comparison.

 

Speaking of Bawabawa, he was trying to climb one of those very same trees.  The arrancar trio were clinging to his mask, cheering him onwards.

 

“Running away, ey…” muttered Chad, peering up at them through his mop-like fringe.  Ichigo was somewhat more vocal.

 

“HEYY!  WHY ARE YOU LEAVING WITHOUT US?” he bellowed, voice carrying far and wide, echoing off the distant trees and distorting in strange ways.

 

“Baka!” wailed Nel in reply.  “This is the Menos no Mori…the entire fowest is crawling with Menos Grande!  Go away, don’t draw attenshun to us!”

 

Ishida backed up against the tree, absently noticing its cold, quartz-like surface whilst focusing on the ink-black gaps between the immense hoar-frosted trunks.  The crystallised bark gave off a faint natural glow, yet not enough to see into the far-off shadows.

 

Was that a suggestion of white?

 

Stretching out his right arm, Uryuu allowed the talisman on his wrist to swing freely.  Leeching power from the spirit particle-saturated air, he channelled it into the form of a spirit bow.

 

 _Crawling indeed._   Drawn by Kurosaki’s shouting, the forest was beginning to swarm with Hollows.  Isolated at first, Lunuganga’s victims were soon surrounded on all sides by Hollows of every shape and size.  It was no wonder now that the guardian of the sands had not bothered to kill them himself – with a death trap like this, there was no need.  The shrieks and growls of mindless, malformed monsters that were once men filled the air.  When they came too close and Bawabawa had still not burrowed an escape route through the desert suspended above their heads, Uryuu opened fire.

 

The first volley of dense spirit arrows took out a huge swathe of the crowding Hollows; yet failing to make a dent in the overall number. 

 

It was the worst situation they could have been in, and they'd been there plenty of times before.  Hundreds of Hollows poised to attack, lurking just out of sight and multiplying by the second.  It was probably Kurosaki's fault as usual, the way he just attracted them with his ridiculous mass of reiatsu.  Ishida just kept firing and firing, mowing down the enemy with Kurosaki firing vast claws of energy and Chad shooting out giant laser beams beside him.  But it made no difference.

 

The enemy was legion.

 

And every blast of reiatsu made more arrive in the hopes of scavenging some human souls.

 

“Ahh – stop it stop it, you'll just make more of them come heeere!” wept Nel, Dondochakka and Pesche.  “You BAKAS.”

 

“What do you want us to do exactly?  Lie down and play dead?!”

 

“Well…yeah...but....okay I see what you mean.  But this is pointless!!!”

 

The attack just got heavier and heavier.  As some hollows began to break through the relatively small defences, Ishida had to switch to targeting the more agile flying enemies.  It was tough going, and they would likely be exhausted in as little as half an hour.

 

A hollow that had lost a limb but not its wings careened into Ichigo; he tossed it aside with an angry slice of Zangetsu and flicked at the bizarre fluids it had dripped on him.  It didn't seem to be acid or anything so corrosive.

 

"What were you trying to do?  Bleed on me?!" he demanded as it evaporated.

 

"This isn't working," gasped Chad, beginning to tire.  His powers had felt a little unstable since entering Hueco Mundo, whether due to the different quality of the dimension he didn't know, but it felt like every time he made a shot he had to pull his punches to prevent a wild explosion.  It was irritating, and difficult to work around in the current onslaught.

 

Having failed to dig their way out in the tightly knitted canopy of the shining crystal trees, Nel and crew returned sullenly down the trunk to the shadowy root layer of the forest.  "Ob course it won' work," sobbed the girl.  She had burst into tears, as Dondochakka and Pesche clung on to her in a sad attempt to comfort.  "The cannibals are gonna come soon and then we’re all doooomed!"

 

"You've attracted every Hollow for five miles around at least," scolded Pesche, patting Nel's skull-mask in a there - there fashion.

 

"We've been in situations like this before," recalled Ishida.  Their continued survival made that a calming thought, he hoped.

 

"Oh what, like when your stupid bait went horribly wrong?  Yeah, that was a barrel of laughs, NOT!"   Ichigo sent three Getsuga Tensho in quick succession, blasting a patch of Hollows into smithereens.

 

"I think the current turnout proves that it was your ooooozing reiatsu and not my bait that attracted them, Kurosaki!"

 

"I told you not to call it oozing!  That's just gross!"

 

"If we kill Itsygo, would they go away?" asked Dondochakka carefully, having picked up Nel's lisped version of the shingami boy's name.  The arrancars huddled, debating this whilst battle raged below them.  Bawabawa had paused in their descent; the tree trunk seemed safer…

 

"We can't kill Itsygo!" gasped Nel.  "Look he’s trying to save us!"

 

Pesche nodded gravely.  "Ye-es, Dondochakkka, if you noticed, we haven't had to kill any Hollows at all yet.  The humans aren't letting them get past to us."

 

"To prevent sneak attacks from behind," thought Ishida.

 

"I don't expect you _can_ fight." mused Chad.

 

"You're welcome to help, anytime, guys!" shouted Ichigo, more than a little pissed off and unnerved by the sheer number of Hollows.  This was much closer to what he'd expected to see in Hueco Mundo though.  The serene desert had been a façade after all.

 

"Oh no, there’s nothing we can do, and Nel's a baby," sighed Pesche, flapping a hand lazily and pooh-poohing the idea.  Bawabawa resumed inching down the enormous tree, sensing approaching danger.

 

A ruby juggernaut tore a chunk out of the trunk above them, severing stump from canopy, and leaving the burnt quartz sizzling.  Woven eternally with the other trees in the vast network of branches, nothing actually fell down; merely remaining suspended in midair, a tree the size of three radio towers.  And somehow, that made it creepier.

 

As one, they all lowered their weapons and stared mutely at the Gillians looming out of the dark. 

 

"Well, I've killed one of them before...easily...chased it away at least."  Ichigo had gone quite pale.  He was again remembering the time when Ishida's Hollow bait had worked altogether too well and summoned a Menos Grande.

 

"And remember the time with the weird Sojiro dude and Hitsugaya-taicho," added Renji.  "We killed loads of them then."

 

"Yeah, sure, a few Gillian is no trouble at all."  Ishida was sweating.

 

Chad winced, squinting into the depths of the quartzwood.  "There’s more than just a few..."

 

"Their noses look like flutes, and they’ve got funny boots and spiky necks..." noted Nel, being less than helpful in this time of doom.  She spoke as though she'd never seen them before.  "I never did get Gillians..."

 

Countless numbers of the so-called foot soldiers were marching towards them, red spheres of death charging at their open-jawed teeth, eyes blank and staring.  The minor Hollows scattered before them, vanishing out of range of the oncoming carnage.

 

“Now would be a good time to flash-run away?” suggested Ichigo, a terrified smile on his face as he just sheathed Zangetsu, knowing attack now would be futile.  Dondochakka shook his oversized head sadly.

 

“No, you’d just get caught by adjuchas…” he said, tears streaming down his festively coloured face.

 

Tiny pinpricks of crimson light were the only colour in the barren, monotone and now deserted Menos no Mori.  Gradually swelling, the orbs were almost ready to fire as the Gillians stooped as one being to aim at the specks on the ground that had unwittingly drawn their attention.

 

Ichigo leapt up to Bawabawa’s helmet, planning to grab hold of their guides and flee as fast as he could.  Ishida was already slinging Chad’s non-armoured arm over his shoulder in preparation to do the same.

 

As the scarlet lights grew large enough to dye the landscape red, Nel threw her tiny hands wide and let loose a piercing scream.  Ichigo took a fistful of her green robe and made as if to run, no time now to grab the others.

 

“STOOOOOOOP!”

 

One by one the baleful lights flickered out inexplicably, except for one Gillian that had gone past the point of no return and discharged its Cero.  It struck a nest of hiding Hollows to the left of the invaders’ tree and vaporised them.

 

And yet the true targets remained untouched, gaping in disbelief at their survival.

 

Into the silence, Renji spoke.

 

“Where’s Rukia?”

**o)0(o**

 

Yuzu huddled close behind her father's leg, but not too close.  She shadowed him everywhere without getting in his way, assisting him with the clinic work as she often had before, but no longer leaving the room when the tasks grew too squeamish.  She passed needles, bandages, antiseptic swaps and medical thread; held sick buckets and patted backs, fetched drinks and food and pillows and occasionally heavy tomes of medicine when Isshin needed to refresh his memory.

 

All the time, Karin was in _that room._

 

The small, clean, private room with the locked door.

 

For those they couldn't save in time.

 

A coroner would be coming soon. But Yuzu doubted he would believe her about the ghosts.  There was a dark bruise on her sister's cold forehead, and another just above her heart.

 

Yuzu couldn't have been more thankful that their father had been away now.  Because if he had come under suspicion of hitting his daughter, what would they have done?

 

Yuzu hadn't seen the monster, but she had felt its presence.  And when she had chokingly tried to explain to her daddy, he had trusted her and nodded and held her tightly.

 

"Yes…I know about the monsters, Yuzu.  With all my brave, brave kids running off to fight them every five minutes, do you think I wouldn't notice?  Shhhh, don't worry, I believe you.  Daddy has always believed in ghosts, even if he couldn't see them.  I know some ghosts are cruel and violent, just like some people are.  I'm so sorry I wasn't here to save her, Yuzu..."

 

Yuzu shook her head quickly, clutching at his too-bright and too-cheerful shirt.  "Otou-chan, you couldn't have done anything...like me....and, and, she'll be in heaven now anyway, right?"

 

Isshin bit his lip hard to keep from having a breakdown in front of his little one, who needed him to be strong now, just like she was being strong for him.  But...

He couldn't tell her....it would be soul-destroying....

 

He could have helped Karin.

 

And she certainly had not gone to heaven.

 

Yuzu felt him tense up and decided not to lie.  "I keep dreaming...I keep trying to have naps and sleep until today is over and...I always dream that Karin-chan is somewhere dark and empty.  I've been able to tell where she was before now but....oh please, tell me I'm wrong, _please…_!"

 

The sorrow of just the two of them was not all that had to be contended with.

 

There were some simple facts of life, like the cleaning up that has to be done after a body has died, and scrubbing carpets, and laying a soft white cloth over _her_ face that should not have been there.  Isshin had washed his daughter's body as was customary, but he had to leave certain parts undone - the hands, the head, the torso, - anything bruised and anything that might have clawed at an attacker.

 

The coroner was coming soon.

 

Until then they had to cope with informing the neighbourhood, ringing up and explaining to the school that the third Kurosaki would not be attending that Monday, ringing police and insurance companies and governmental registrars.

 

Telling everyone who needed to know.  There were no cousins or grandparents to inform, and for the first time Yuzu wondered why.

 

But the worst part was the neighbours.  Those who hadn't known them personally, that the Kurosakis were loud and argumentative and play fighting and almost a broken home with cracks barely visible, torn in the absence of the mother, but forever good-natured.

 

The ones that didn't know them, and pointed fingers, and gossiped quietly and snidely about the bolshie father, the rebellious son, the tomboy daughter, and only one of them normal, and she driven like a slave with the running of the house.  They gathered and clucked about children living in a drugstore and clinic, abuse of medicines, shrewdly asking the whereabouts of the Yankee ginger boy, and damning Isshin for being so free with his children's upbringing.

 

It was horrible.

 

But somehow the condolences hurt more.

 

There was a short ring of the doorbell, and Yuzu ran to open it.  It revealed a suit, and a large steel briefcase.

 

"Are you one of the family?" asked the coroner, and she mutely nodded, knowing why he had come.

 

"Otou-san is working in the clinic and Karin is in the quiet room."  She led the way, trying to calm the trembling in her body that would soon turn into shaking and racking sobs.  She didn't want that to happen yet.  She was hoping that if she could hold it in for long enough she would never have to say goodbye to her twin. 

 

Karin had never cried.

 

"Otou-san!  The coroner is here..." she called softly.  Her father's state was a little worrying.  Every now and then he would have to stop and take a break from the stitches he was putting into an old man's arm, because his fingers were so unsteady.  But the work needed to be done.

 

Isshin gave a heavy sigh, like the mournful cries of an ocean wind, and handed over to his assistant.  The nurse had been called in from a temp agency to deal with patients that had only the Kurosaki clinic to go to, and no way of knowing they were queuing at a mortuary now.

 

Isshin lead the stern-looking man into the 'quiet room', pulling the key from the ring on his belt and unlocking the door with slow movements.  Setting his suitcase down on the small side table, the man clicked the locks.

 

"I'm afraid that the examination will need to be carried out here.  Due to recent events, such as the citywide gas leak, the city mortuaries are full.  Obviously we were unprepared for a spontaneous mass death…"

 

"Some people are saying that was a terrorist attack," noted Isshin.  "An airborne bio-weapon that decomposed very quickly.  Mind you, others have blamed it on that meteorite strike."  He spoke of the tragic day when an Espada had come hunting for his son, and its friend had swallowed the souls of many innocent people using a technique called gonzui.  He hoped that ability was limited to Yammy.  It was an ability of mass destruction.  And there was no way for the wider world to explain it.

 

"Well, until we learn the truth, people will tell themselves anything.  To begin with, I need to ask you some questions on your daughter's medical history, and I'm afraid that your other child – Yuzu? – will need to remain in the room as she is a witness."

 

"...okay..." whispered Yuzu quietly.

 

"I heard there was a brother?"

 

"He's on a road trip of some sort," said Isshin quickly.

 

"And Yuzu, was there any suggestion of an attacker in the house whilst you were out on the street?"

 

“…No..."

 

"So..."  The investigator pulled out a clipboard and pen, and sat down on one of the plain wooden chairs that furnished the sparse room.  "The medical history: is there anything that could have triggered Karin's death, such as a pre-existing condition?"

 

"She was prone to migraines."  Isshin placed his hand on a shallow pile of papers also on the table.  "These are the records of everything she took for it and any of the migraine attacks she informed me of, but she wasn't the type to take medicine.  All my children tend to forget to take aspirins and things, funnily enough, because they don't wish to form a dependence and be tempted by the clinic's stock." 

 

"They're clever kids," noted the Coroner.

 

Isshin quirked a smile.  "The best."

 

He carried on.  "Karin was prescribed some powders for a brief time by a GP at the main hospital, but she'd been off them for a while.  The migraines would vary in intensity, from painless eye migraines to head-splitting, hallucinatory...she occasionally would ramble on about ghosts and the like."  This was a testing statement.  In his experiences, some coroners tended to have a talent for sensing the afterlife due to their daily proximity to death.

 

The current examiner made no indication of agreeing.  The pen scurried over the paper.

 

"Apart from that, she is – was a very bright, sporty, healthy girl.  This has...come out of nowhere."

 

The coroner nodded, rested his writing apparatus on the table and moved over to the bed, snapping on some disposable surgical gloves as he did so.  Gently, with an apologetic glance at Yuzu, he lifted the white shroud from the small cadaver's face.

 

"Bruising on the temple," he murmured to the dictaphone in his pocket.  "By the way, Yuzu can leave now if she wishes."

 

"I'm fine," said the girl tightly.  She was clinging to her father's arm.

 

"Anytime you feel the need, just go." repeated the coroner.  Not to chase her away, but to make sure she wouldn't feel pressured to stay.  "And bruising on the chest near to the location of the heart and above the centre of the ribs."

 

Isshin blinked away tears.  Karin was meant to be in that body, her own, real body and running around happily.  It was no overly-attached gigai like he wore.

 

"Strange bruises..." muttered the man, and Isshin looked up sharply.  "I've seen bruises like this before; they're more like shadows on the skin..."

 

The mark of a Hollow's touch.

 

"A certain kind of internal bleeding?" asked the resident doctor, words like lead in his mouth.

 

"Caused by the migraines?  A brain aneurysm, perhaps...or a stroke."

 

"A migraine shouldn't really...be connected to a brain aneurysm, when there are no pain receptors in the brain."

 

"Well, you must know as well as I do that there's no smoke without fire.  Problems in the body can affect each other."

 

"Should...should a migraine affect your heart?  Didn't Karin-chan have a heart attack?"  Swallowing her discomfort, Yuzu had spoken up.

 

"No, not really," Isshin hastened to inform her.  "The heart beats independently, that's why we have adrenaline to make it speed up.  Unless she panicked so much that her heart went too fast and skipped."  He raised an eyebrow at the coroner, who shrugged, busy inspecting the bruises.

 

"I could take a blood sample and check for traces of adrenaline...also, I'm afraid that her body may need to stay here until tomorrow.  The mortuary really is overrun at the moment.  I wouldn't usually ask, but you do have a designated place."  The room wasn't chilly by accident.  It was actually refrigerated to a low degree by design.  "I have to say, you're both taking this rather well.  Now, I don't wish to presume, but that may hint at premeditation when the police arrive."

 

Dr Kurosaki gave a shrug of his own.  "They should understand that a doctor's clinic makes no secret of death being a part of life.  And me and Yuzu, we're putting on a brave face until the punters have all gone home, aren't we sweetheart?"  He hugged Yuzu to his side, able to reach out without looking thanks to her new habit of trailing him duckling-style.

 

She dug her hands into his sides, determined not to cry.  Karin wouldn't want her to cry.  And she understood now, how Karin's decision not to cry was made out of concern so as not to burden her family.  She knew how hard it was now.  But she would be like Karin, just in this small way.  The same as when her mother had been murdered, Yuzu would move to fill in the gap.

 

It was the only thing she could do to keep her here.

**o)0(o**

 

As the cero hit, he felt a presence in the forest.  Like a pebble thrown into a loch, its ripples were small but clear.

 

That was not a Hollow.

 

Somehow, after all these centuries, another human had come to the Menos no Mori.

 

The mask he was holding like a shield burned to ash, but the one positioned behind it did not, which was all that saved his distracted life.  Spitting a few words of annoyance, the man struck at the Gillian before it could charge up another attack and severed it in two halves.

 

With a morbid scream, the giant vanished.  Ashido brushed the ash from the useless mask off of his hands, sighing.  Hollow masks rarely remained when the rest of them died - and specimens tough enough to deflect a cero were even rarer.  But they were valuable for all that, so he would continue to scavenge them and draw the fire of the Menos Grande, just in the hopes of finding another.

 

The presence chimed again, and he stood for a moment, trying to decide whether to smile or frown, and trying with all his might to figure out whether this new shinigami's arrival was real or another figment of his occasionally fevered imagination.

 

Five hundred years can do that to a person.  Over and over again.

 

Slipping into the state of concentration that allowed one to see spirit threads, he found several black, as always, leading to the countless minus spirits in this miserable realm - and the suggestion of a red ribbon curling in the distance.

 

Well, there were Gillians in that direction he could kill, so it wouldn't hurt to check it out, right?

 

"Right, Genji?" he asked aloud, speaking to a long dead best friend before groaning and scrubbing his hand across his face.  He had to stop doing this.

 

Well, no one was going to stop him or tell him off, but he vaguely remembered it wasn't a mentally healthy thing to do...

 

-

 

 Leaping through the petrified forest, from quartz branch to crystal trunk, Ashido wondered what to do with the thing under his arm.  He was pretty sure by now that it was a real person, and the prospect of true company in this barren loneliness was making his sanity kick and claw its way back to the surface of his mind. 

 

He would have to test the woman, of course.  There was no point in her staying within Hueco Mundo if she would only be eaten alive by week two; and there again she might want to leave anyway.  He doubted she had the same shadows of her past clinging to her here.

 

And probably he would take her back to the den, in its hidden nook that the adjuchas had not been able to find for a few weeks now.  He hoped she wouldn't be hungry, because the kinds of things he was driven to eat would turn the strongest of stomachs.

 

It was one of the many, many reasons he hid and conserved his reiatsu as much as possible.  Less energy used meant less to replace.

 

And that was why she kicked him in the back and escaped as fast as possible, seconds after waking up.

 

Naturally, she couldn't sense his human spirit, it being tucked away inside himself.  And Ashido slowly remembered that the masks and furs he wore were not normal, and that strangers would need to see his face even if removal of the skulls might leave him open to an unexpected cero blast.

 

But she should know that a Hollow will not carry its prey away to eat later.  It will just devour them immediately.

 

He really would need to test her.  And if she was not strong enough to survive alone, he would try to escort her above the sands and hopefully to a Garganta.  It would take time, but would be necessary.

 

In two flash steps, he had caught her again.

 

She beat him up all the way back to his hideout, but at least his antelope-like mask hid his silent laughter.  The fists of a shinigami were nothing to the jaws of a Hollow.

 

Her kicks, on the other hand, _were_ painful.

 

-

 

The time for an introduction had come.  He tried to recall how these things went; how to speak more than three-word sentences.

 

"My name is Ashido Kano, and I am indeed a shinigami.  I have lived in this forest for hundreds of years.  After my friends died, I followed the duty of a member of the Gotei 13 and tried to exterminate the Hollows at source."

 

Hooking the horned mask up and away from his face, Ashido revealed his messy dark red hair, slim and wary eyes; unsmiling mouth.  As they stared at each other, and drank in each other's appearances, he began to believe that this might not be an illusion after all.

 

"I am Kuchiki Rukia, member of the thirteenth division, and-"

 

A blast of power interrupted them, and her one-man audience shot away into the darkness.  That was the aura of an adjuchas, one of the most dangerous denizens of the dead woods.  And it was one that knew his name far too well.

 

Speaking of names, Kuchiki rang a bell as being quite important and familiar, but the reasons why escaped him.  It wasn’t his priority right now.

 

Chasing behind him, Rukia tried to take in the fact that she had been found by a five hundred year-old shinigami, who had been hunting his nemeses ever since he and his friends had made the mistake of charging through a Garganta.  The striking mask he wore, with its large round eyes and long, twisted, ibex-like horns had formerly belonged to the Hollow that had killed the last of his friends.  He had been wearing it ever since, as he sought his revenge.  A huge fur hide, which must have been near-impossible to salvage without the previous owner disintegrating into spirit particles, swamped his body and hid his human form.  Several more masks adorned it – bone armour plates.

 

She had guessed he was a shinigami before he had proved it.  There was kido lighting his cave, and he had carried her with human hands.  But his face, so simple and unscarred, had still come as a shock.  The dark grey eyes seemed resolute, but how could he have remained alone for all that time without a hint of insanity or injury?

 

It seemed impossible.  Perhaps he disguised it well.

 

-

 

Compared to a monotonous eternity in the Menos no Mori; a daily grind of killing, hunting, fleeing, surviving...the frantic action in that single day or night, those few hours, was unbelievable.

 

With the aid of Rukia's icy shikai, one of the adjuchas that had longest eluded him was dead.  When they returned to the friends of his new companion - more humans?  More new faces and voices?  And a Quincy?! - it was like a dream come true.  The kind of dreams a loner far from home found to resemble jeering nightmares.  He was scared of waking up back in his hovel, and seeing no one.  But he said nothing, having learnt over the years that hallucinations had to run their course.

 

The other travellers of Hueco Mundo had been surrounded by Gillians and accompanied by minor Hollows - one had a curiously human face.  Unless it was one of those strange, rare and near-legendary arrancars, then Ashido was becoming more and more certain of his doubts...

 

Rukia yelled at her friends for a while, reminding them that a Gillian should no longer be a big deal at any quantity, and that their hesitations were suicidal.  When told of the dilemma of alerting more Hollows to their presence and location, she just scoffed and pointed out that such a thing was inevitable when travelling with Ichigo (who was less than pleased at the jibe).  When told of Nel's sudden control over the Gillians, she frowned and pursed her lips.  Whispering that any arrancar would likely have suspicious connections with - and Ashido didn't catch the name - the petite woman warned them to be cautious of their new acquaintances.

 

The Menos that had regathered were then obliterated in a sudden show of strength from the strangers.  An entire herd of milling Gillians was wiped out as they apparently waited for further instructions from the arrancar child.

 

In no time at all, the crowd of people were turning to him and asking for guidance in the direction of the exit.  Hoping it was still where he remembered it to be, Ashido saw no harm in showing them the way - so long as this dream didn't cause him to sleepwalk out of his hideout and unwittingly into danger.

 

There was a deep shaft in a cliff that could be crawled through and up to reach the dust-swept surface of the Hueco Mundo desert.  It would even leave them fairly close to Las Noches, a place Ashido had avoided more than usual ever since its half-crumbling walls had been repaired and roofed with gleaming white domes.

 

Maybe that was connected to the recent changes in the Hollows.  But Rukia had refused to tell him anything definite.  He wondered how severe the problem was, that she feared to speak of it.  But perhaps she was vague because she wasn't real.

 

None of it felt real until the Gillians gathered at the root of the chasm, brewing their ceros at the will of a stray, vengeful adjuchas; and in a crimson supernova sent the cliff crashing down on his head.  He hoped Rukia and her friends had gotten away safely, even if they were figments.  Surely he could ask for good news from his own imagination?

 

The unbearable weight of the earth smothered all thoughts from his head, and buried him in inky blackness.  It was too painful to be fictional.

 

Shit, came his final, feeble moment of awareness.

 

He must have sleepwalked into a trap.

**o)0(o**

 

Orihime was hustled into a vast and barely-lit hallway, stumbling to an abrupt halt as Ulquiorra stopped pushing her and dropped her arm like it had insulted him.  Looking around the room furtively, trying not to draw the gaze of the other inhabitants with her own terrified glances; she hoped to god she hadn't been right.

 

She prayed with all her might that she had not been brought here to be mutated into a Hollow.  Had they just been waiting for her to drop her guard and believe that they hadn't desired her personally? 

 

But what reason would Aizen have to wait?

 

Hougyoku, whispered the back of her mind.  The Hougyoku right there.

 

_Within reach._

 

However, when the entire upper bastion of Aizen's forces were in a single room, it may as well have been on the other side of the world.

 

Inoue glared at it, imprinting it on her memory and burning it into her soul by sheer force of will.  She would not be left helpless like this forever.  She was determined to get her hands on the Hougyoku and...

 

_Unmake it._

 

That was her cunning plan, having realised that it was the only thing in this fortress that could not fight back and kill her whilst she attempted to reject it out of time, space; and into oblivion.

 

Ice slush born of fear began to trickle through her stomach.

 

She would never be able to destroy the Hougyoku, the amplifier of Aizen's already prodigious powers, if she was turned into a Hollow here and now.

 

_She could not bear to be made Hollow._

 

Not like Sora.

 

Not like Sora.

 

Not like her brother.

 

-

 

Barragan had returned, and nodded curtly to his masters, loath though he was to admit them as such.  Aizen returned the gesture with a small smile, and clicked his fingers.

 

A portal appeared in the centre of the widely-proportioned room.  It was not a Garganta, there were no spirit particles within, only shadows of dark matter.  It was a pathway only pure souls could tread without guidance.

 

"Tousen," said the architect of Soul Society's doom pleasantly.  "If you would."

 

Approaching the ragged doorway with no need of eyes to sense the rip in reality, Tousen Kaname, the former Ninth Division Captain, reached out with a delicate hand and stroked the empty air in a come-hither movement.

 

Bidden by the gesture almost as fragile as itself, a hell butterfly fluttered out of the sliver between dimensions and alighted upon his outstretched finger.  In a place so tenuous as this, more than a single jigoku-cho was needed, and so the blind man waited until he felt the feather-touch of several more butterflies before stepping forwards into the unknown.

 

Orihime realised she was holding her breath.  How did this strange ritual fit into the process of creating an arrancar?  Seconds ticked by with no clocks to count them; moments dragged their feet behind each other.  

 

"Hope 'e ain't lost," said Ichimaru Gin, dropping the quip into the silence with his kitsune smile.  No one returned it.

 

As the time stretched further than was comfortable, the tension was at last broken when Tousen stepped back out of the rift in a cloud of black butterflies.  They filled the room, flaunting the deep red-pink crescents at the edges of their wings, the most vibrant colour in all the worlds.

 

There was a small, limp something draped over Tousen's arms.  Leaning from side to side, Inoue tried to catch a proper glimpse of it around the swarming butterflies.  When she did, her skin drained of all blood, turning as ashen as Ulquiorra's in her horrified surprise.

 

Wrapped in a plain grey yukata and with a dark bruise in the centre of her forehead, the person lying unconscious in the enemy's clutches was inexplicably...

 

Kurosaki Karin.

 

Tousen hefted the little girl upright and set her on the floor in front of Aizen Sosuke.  There was only a single link left on her Chain of Fate; now that the obscuring insects had scattered Orihime could see that the bruise was in fact a Hollow hole - driven straight through the core of the child's skull.

 

Released from the support, Karin's soul slumped sideways bonelessly.  Not a single twitch of controlled movement troubled her still form.  Inoue clutched at the black-bordered white fabric of her dress, falling into a crouch as her stomach heaved with nausea.

 

Ichigo's little sister.

 

_Ichigo's little sister._

 

What kind of sick travesty was this?

 

Hadn't they taken enough from Kurosaki-kun already, these Hollows?  What purpose could kidnapping and carving out the metaphysical heart of Kurosaki-kun's little sister possibly hold?

 

"Who is this?" asked Aizen, purely as a formality.  The king he had usurped shrugged carelessly.

 

"I did not ask.  It merely occurred that the first human I came across was of the required calibre."

 

"Kuro-!" shouted Inoue; unable to bite the words back early enough.  All eyes in the room fell on her, each pair with its own level of lizard-like disdain for anything not themselves.  Tousen tilted his head towards her.

 

"Mmm?  You know this li’l chick, Ori-chan?"  Gin's voice chirped with false friendship.

 

Chewing on her bottom lip, Inoue straightened up from the floor and pushed her auburn hair out of her face.  She stared at the victim's small, prone body with tears in her eyes.

 

"She...she's Ichigo's little sister...Kurosaki Karin...and – she’s only _twelve_ , for god's sake!"

 

"You are only three or four years different," Aizen reminded her.  He shared a wide grin with his right-hand albino.  "Kurosaki's little sister..."

 

"Don't get much better than that," agreed Ichimaru, walking closer to roll the child onto her back with the toe of his sandal.  "I love ironic stuff like this - it's hilarious."

 

"It makes sense though."  Szayal Apollo had interrupted.  "When looking for souls with similar defects to our current invader, the first port of call would naturally be his closest relatives."

 

"She is the correct type, then?" confirmed Aizen Sosuke, resting his chin comfortably in his palm. 

 

"The easiest way to demonstrate this," stated Szayel, lifting one of Karin's lifeless arms and exuding reiatsu around his hand; "is to show how the volume of spiritual power grows automatically when the specimen is in a risky situation such as a battle.  Take note of her aura."  Expanding his own just enough to inconvenience the small human, he broke her little finger with a clinical snap.

 

Karin's reiatsu flared.  It was still laughable compared to that of the Espada, but it had increased instantly and noticeably.

 

"Her power can increase in this fashion exponentially, the same as her brother's does."  He let go of her hand with a flick.  "As such the Hougyoku should present no problem to her."

 

"Wonderful," Aizen applauded him.  "Then let us begin, my dear Espadas."  The final link hanging from the bracket on Karin's suddenly devoured itself, and he amended his words.  "Let us begin _immediately_."

 

The low, harsh scream of a degenerating Plus was building up inside Karin; a cry of wild suffering dragged from the darkest depths of the soul until it broke free of the throat in a reverberating wail.  Her body jerked upright, swaying on its knees.

 

"Way of Binding Number..." said Gin quickly, steepling his fingers and casting the kido; the rest of his words drowned out by the instinctive screams of the blacked out child.

 

Shouting turned to strangled gurgling as white clay started to bubble out of Karin's mouth, harbinger of the future mask as she fully devolved into a Hollow.  Aizen touched his fingertips to the fluid surface of the Hougyoku, tiny tendrils wriggling out of it and latching on to him, leech-like.  He poured his power into it, donating reiatsu twice that of any captain to the transformation.

 

The Kurosaki girl's struggles ceased when Gin's kido bandages smothered her, trapping in the effects of the scientific magic that was about to occur.

 

Orihime ran to the far corner of the hall, unheeded by her jailor or any other arrancar.  She needed to escape this pressure in the air before it suffocated her.  Huddling down, she commanded her shield to appear and hoped that her fairies would survive the onslaught.

 

She need not have worried.  The ceremony was over almost immediately.  The end was heralded by the clatter of a zanpakuto on the floor, one that had not existed before.

 

The mummified figure in the centre of the room shuddered, breathing harshly.

 

Hallibel stepped up to unwrap the bandages, just enough to reveal a face whose eyes were sharper than Karin's had been, whose skin was so pale it made Ulquiorra look grey; and the open, gasping mouth bared needle-sharp rows of piranha teeth.  There was nothing of Ichigo's little sister left here.

 

She was almost colourless.

 

And despite the transformation, still mindless.

 

Panicking butterflies darted around the ceiling, some settling on the newborn child soldier with no visible thought for their safety.  Unable to resist any longer, Wonderwice ran out of the loose circle of Espadas and Privarons; firing Balas at the pretty targets that swooped so temptingly above his head.

 

Several butterflies were burned to ashes within seconds.  As he aimed for one resting on Karin's unmoving shoulder, a hand shot out and clapped against his.  Shadowy reiatsu, almost a kind of black light, flickered in the girl's palm.  It nullified his Bala much like the green-hatted shinigami had during his visit to the human world.  Wonderwice Margera whined in childish irritation at the memory.

 

He opened his mouth to charge up a red Cero, never one to adhere to Aizen's schedules.

 

Karin's hand closed over his mouth, and the dark reiatsu flickered again, matching and cancelling out his Cero faster than he could form it.  He fell still, submissive.  Even the admittedly mentally retarded arrancar could tell this newcomer was dangerous, despite the pretties that adorned her so innocently.

 

"Success," announced the mastermind of the operation magnanimously.  "Instinct is all we need from her.  And her instincts are likely impeccable.  This time, we shall wait until we are outside before testing her Resurrección capabilities, however."

 

Gin and Stark laughed briefly.

 

Releasing her shield, Inoue hid her face in her hands and sobbed.

 

When Ichigo learned of this, it was going to destroy him...  

**o)0(o**

 

**Belated Bloomake!**

_Arrancar Cup?_

**o)0(o**

 

“That was the most awful introduction I have ever seen,” grumbled Ichigo.

 

“At least there was no poetry…” noted Ishida.

 

To submerse the world in devastation!

 

To unite all Hollows within our nation!

 

To denounce the goodness of truth and love!

 

To extend our reach to the moon above!

 

Dondo!  Nel!  Pesche!  Bawabawa that's right!

 

They shuddered at the mental image.

 

Yup.  Thank heaven for that.

                                                                                                               

**o)0(o**

 

**Author’s Notes:**

 

The end of the last chapter was far too sad to have a bloomake.  So here it is. 

 

**o)0(o**

 

**Bloomake!**

 

_Arrancar Encyclopaedia_

**o)0(o**

 

Rukia:  I’m amazed you’ve stayed sane for all this time, Ashido!

 

Ashido:  Yes…um…can I ask you a favour?

 

Rukia:  Yes?

 

Ashido:  Will you come to my unicorn’s tea party at Las Noches tomorrow?

 

Rukia:  Um…no…?

 

Ashido:  Just Bawabawa and Miss Enid then…I hope they like TimTams…

**o)0(o**

 

_Wonderwice is standing in front of a chalkboard, very excited at his first Arrancar Encyclopaedia spot.  There is a badly drawn butterfly on the board, Rukia-style._

W: *pointing with a stick*  Bwaaa!  Ehehe!

 

W: *miming something*  DOOSH DOOSH BAMMM!!!

 

W: *pulls out giant claymore and decimates chalkboard* Squee e e e !!

 

Gin:  Tousen, would ya keep yer pet away from my omakes?

 

Tousen:  He’s a free spirit.  Locking him up would be unjust.

 

W:  Many thanks for your wonderful and energising reviews, watch out for the show same time next week!  Adios!

 

G&T:  O_o;;

 

**o)0(o**

 

_Alliriyan~*_


	5. Prayer versus Declaration

** ~o) Hell Butterfly (o~ **

**Prayer versus Declaration**   
  


**~05~**

**o)0(o**

Rukia pressed her fist into the ground, coarse sand cutting into her skin with barely noticed incisions.  Her dark hair fell across her face as she stared downwards, trying to see through the layers of rock and sediment and fossilised tree branches.  Trying to see Ashido.

 

He had waited five hundred years.  Even to someone with over a century and a half under their belt like her, it was a mind-blowing span of time.  And he had fought to the bitter end every one of those days to decrease the Hollow threat upon the world of the living. 

 

That had been his duty.  That had been his choice.  So perhaps, to say he had been waiting for rescue was wrong.

 

But she wished, with all her will power, as if it could alter reality; that she could have rescued him anyway.

 

He had finally decided to leave.

 

Exhaling as though every breath was a stone falling from her lungs, Kuchiki Rukia said a silent farewell and tried to convince herself it was for the best.  Did she really want to take him back to the Soul Society he had willingly left behind - and show him how torn it was?  Tell him that his old home was broken, his efforts had been in vain, and trusted shinigami captains were even now empowering the evillest of Hollows to destroy the world?

 

But nothing she offered as reason or excuse erased her guilt.  She was the one who had brought him to that tunnel at that time.  Once again she had betrayed someone she admired and respected.

 

 _When we leave Hueco Mundo, I will return here and bring you home,_ she vowed wordlessly.  _If you still survive, because I_ know _you are strong; whether you are a lifeless corpse.  Even if there's nothing to take, I will carry your memory back to Soul Society and command a grand funeral for the shinigami so loyal - and all of his friends.  I promise Ashido..._

_...I will come back for you._

**o)0(o**

 

Before they commenced the final trek towards Las Noches - now much closer - the rescue squad paused to take stock of their surroundings and condition.

 

"I got bitten by a Hollow," griped Renji, holding out the puffy wound on his upper arm in exasperation.  "Rukia, could you-?"

 

" _Bleghhh_..."

 

"UGH what the hell are you doing?!" shouted the tattooed fukutaicho, punching Nel off of her sudden perch on his shoulder.  "That freak just threw up on me!"

 

No one managed to react immediately, most being quite too weirded-out to respond.  Nel thudded into a dune and sat up, pointing at her shinigami-shaped sick bucket as if he had called her rude name.  Which to be honest, he had.

 

"Hey!  Dat's not vomit, it's my speshul healing saliva!  You shouldn't hit people dat are just twying to help!" 

 

"It's what now?" asked Rukia, her hands still half-raised in preparation for a medical kido spell.

 

"Nel's saliva repairs damage, donchaknow.  It's powerful stuff!" explained Dondochakka, sounding proud of his so-called little sister.  Pesche scratched the side of his beetle-ish mask briefly.  "Well, it might be vomit..." he admitted unsurely.  "We've never really checked."

 

The expressions of the invasion crew progressed from shocked to squicked.

 

"I'll stick with Rukia," said Renji baldly.  However as promised, there was nothing left to heal when he held out his arm to her for the second time.  Nel stuck her tongue out at him the next time he looked at her.  "Itsygo will aksept my help, won't you Itsygo?"  Her voice was as pointed as a child's lisp could make it.

 

Ichigo hastened to assure her otherwise.  "NO!  ...No, I'm fine, thanks."

 

"Well that makes a change," said Ishida slyly.  The strawberry glared daggers at him.

 

"What are you trying to say?"

 

"Don't act so surprised, Substitute!  You get ripped to shreds in every single battle you enter!"  Now Renji was mocking him.  _Renji_.

 

Chad shifted slightly and agreed.  "It's true."  Ichigo blinked, why was everyone against him all of a sudden?

 

"I dare you to admit it out loud.  Your fighting style is abysmal."  Rukia's grin was wide and challenging.  He folded his arms and frowned back.  He was good at frowning.

 

"The same thing happens to all of us, why are we picking on just me?  And considering the kind of people we've been fighting, the fact that we're still alive has got to be proof of some skill, right?"  The furrow in his brow smoothed briefly and he grinned straight back at the first shinigami he had ever met.  "Except you Rukia, I can't think of anyone special you've beate-"

 

"Finish that sentence and I will come to your house in the middle of the night and annihilate you."  The petite soul reaper's face was demonic, large blue eyes only conveying greater hatred.  She could have been a seated officer, damn it!  It was only her Nii-sama's influence that kept her from kicking the asses of _all_ their enemies.  She sniffed haughtily, walking away towards the white fortress.  “If all we’re doing is standing around and bickering, then I suggest we get a move on.”

 

**o)0(o**

 

When they reached the high walls that surrounded Las Noches, they felt quite helpless.  When Nel chirped that the closest gateway was three days' walk to the east, they felt a more than a little thwarted.

 

When Ichigo suggested they just blast a new hole in the wall, they cheered.

 

"And the whole purpose of the sneak entry was...?"

 

Ichigo just shrugged helplessly at the short woman.  "You saw the way those Gillians swarmed towards us - as for me being able to sneak, I'm not that optimistic."  He pulled Zangetsu's heavy black blade off his shoulders, the bandages that wrapped it in place of a sheath flying every which way.  "Besides," he smirked; "if we knock loud enough, the right people might answer."

 

Renji moved to stand opposite him, Zabimaru showing all its spiky glory.  Having shared a look and selected the unlucky section of via sideways glances, raised eyebrows and nods of heads; both began to shunt their reiatsu into their zanpakutos until the sharp edges gleamed with blue and red light.  But before they could knock, someone opened the door.

 

With a Cero.

 

Had the invaders not been standing out of range of their friends' strikes, more than one would have been killed by the superheated, lancing energy of that golden Cero.

 

Coughing and hacking on the air that was mostly brick dust and churned-up sand, Renji and Ichigo charged instinctively at the figure obscured by the clouds it had created.  Metal clanged, and a huge spiritual pressure pushed the clouds aside.

 

It could only be an Espada.

 

He was blocking Ichigo and Renji's combined charged attacks singlehanded, with the shaft of an enormous double-headed, crescent-bladed axe.  And that he was holding in one hand.

 

The Arrancar's black-haired head rolled back to rest against the large, circular parody of a halo that framed his collar.  His eyes were long and slanting; pupils tiny, baleful pin-pricks.  Baring large, sharp teeth like Kurotsuchi Mayuri's, he grunted out a greeting.

 

"Took your sweet fucking time getting here, didn't you?"  He thrashed the fifteen foot long axe sideways, sending his two opponents flying backwards.  “The entertainment had better be worth the wait.”

 

Then something small caught his eye, and he gave a vicious grin.

 

"What a revelation…  What a pissing _miracle_.  I never expected to see you losers back here again..."  Holding the mammoth weapon by the very end of its shaft, he stretched out and hooked the tip under the feet of the smallest visitor to Las Noches.  Squeaking and trying not to fall onto the sharp edges, Nel tried desperately to keep her balance on the centre of the axe where the two waning moons connected back-to-back.

 

"...It's been great round here without you, stupid fucking female...I've nearly worked my way up to your old rank - and that's with the _current_ strength of the Espada."

 

Still gathering their wits, the import of the arrancar’s words was completely lost on the reeling Plus souls.  Nnoitra, the Quinta Espada, took no notice of them.  He was not interested in weaklings who could not even shift his zanpakuto.  But Nel Tu was a very pleasing little toy indeed.

 

Time to play.

 

With a flick of his wrist, the tiny Hollow child was tossed high into the air.  Nnoitra spun the axe in his grip, coiling his body into a spring before lunging like a tennis champion smacking a power serve - the battleaxe was his racket, and the fast-dropping Nel had the bad luck to be the ball.

 

Milliseconds before contact Ichigo intercepted the blow.  His feet skidded backwards in the sand; Nel bounced off his head.  Peeking up from the ground, she cringed immediately as that black steel axe levered down on Itsygo.  By the time she dared look again, his orange head was cracking off the towering walls of the midnight citadel, body sliding down.

 

She reached out one of her little, weak, child's hands towards him.  "I-Itsygo..."

 

Smoke exploded, hiding everything, she never saw where it came from.  But when she could see again, the hand that was still helplessly towards her strange, fallen, shinigami comrade had...changed?

 

It was no pudgy toddler's hand.  The fingers were long and elegant, the arm lean, the wrist tilted gracefully...the palm cupping a sheathed katana.  And she stared at it and knew its name.  And she looked at the Espada who was glaring at her with his irate, hateful eyes and knew his name, even as his chest heaved and the axe shook with the force of his anger.  And she looked at Las Noches, and knew that if she stepped inside those blank walls she would recognise its featureless halls perfectly. 

 

This was her home.  And if Aizen's propaganda was to be believed, Nnoitra was her brother.

 

A brother that had taken sibling rivalry to the feuding level.

 

"Ichigo," she said again, reminding herself of his risky position.  Three sonido steps later and he was propped up against a rock far from the danger zone - though in a fight between Espada she predicted such safety would be negligible.  He stirred and mumbled weakly, she ignored his pleas for her to step away from the battle.  It must have been his confusion talking, mused Nel, turning back to Nnoitra just as a strong wind blew out of nowhere.  She completely failed to catch Ichigo's shocked choking as her huge, unmistakeable tattoo of a gothic number 3 was unveiled by the breeze.

 

 _E-E-Espada?_ squeaked the only portion of Ichigo's brain still working.  Small hyperactive children do not turn into Amazonian warriors every day, of course.

 

"Please do not worry, Ichigo.  I have been fighting Nnoitra for a very long time.  I used to win against him every day of the week."  Drawing her sword as if she had never been parted from it, she sent a filthy look at her old sparring partner.  "To be honest, it was never worthy of being called a fight, and I dislike bullying..."

 

In an instant she was back in front of Nnoitra, stabbing his head clean through.  He tched and stepped backwards, completely unfazed.

 

"Have you forgotten everything, you stupid bint?  Cutting empty air doesn't get you any points."  Tossing aside his ruined eye patch, a Hollow hole carved straight through the left side of his face was revealed.  It was ringed with sharp teeth, enamel points growing out of a strange twist of bone.  "Don't expect this to be anything like our other fights.  The Espada have evolved in power fivefold since I chucked you out."

 

"You must be happy," murmured Nel with a hint of sarcasm.  "I bet all the girls have gone too." 

 

His face twitched.  "Thunderwitch got kicked out to Privaron, but the Tres is still a bitch like you.  The Quatro is pretty fucking girly too..."  Nel laughed in reply.

 

That stopped abruptly when Nnoitra shot out his axe, striking a gash in Ishida's shoulder.  The buxom former Espada moved quickly to block further attacks, her leaf-green mane billowing with the speed of her parries.  "Targeting the weaker companions again, I see..." hissed the warrior, her hatred sibilant.

 

She caught sight of Dondochakka and Pesche in the corner of her field of vision.  They were crying with joy at her transformation into the capable adult who had once led them in battle, yet their tears only reminded her of a memory from her pseudo-childhood - her two loyal Fraccion, hiding beneath tattered rags until they could thieve new faces; as their masks had been ripped off.  An arrancar may find new strength in the breaking of its mask, but all that power is lost and more so should the remaining shards be totally lost.

 

Nnoitra stuck his tongue out at her in a vulgar fashion, the black '5' symbolising his ascent through three ranks during her exile clearly visible.  "Gonna call me a cheater?" he asked mockingly.

 

She spin-kicked his deadly curved axe head away barefooted.  The dark, mournful sockets of her fractured skull mask stared at him gravely as she dipped her head down in a moment of thought.  Taupe eyes rose to look straight through him, as though he were worthless, when she voiced her measured reply.

 

"There is no cheating in war.  Solely survival.  I do not judge you for stooping to diversions and attacking me from behind in order to shatter my mask.  Any person, who enters willingly into battle without just cause, is already beneath such moralisations.  All warriors are already in the wrong.”

 

A bead of molten yellow was dripping off the end of Nnoitra Jiruga's still-extended tongue.  It seemed that Nel had not seen it yet, which worried Rukia.  That was clearly the beginnings of a Cero, an acid gold like the blast that had torn down the impeding wall of Aizen's castle.  As she watched, it grew to a berry, and then an apple-sized sphere of soul pressure.  But their knight was still blindly shouting her speech.

 

"My Fraccion had no part in our battle, Jiruga!  And it is the price of damaging innocents under my command that you will now pay, so-called Quinta Espada!"  Raising her zanpakuto to shoulder height in readiness for her Resurreccion, she spotted the ripening Cero hovering beneath her nemesis's stretched smile. 

 

Spotted it – too late?

 

**o)0(o**

 

"Nel...the third strongest Espada, with her own Fraccions?" Ichigo asked himself, utterly bewildered.  "Nel?  The toddler Hollow that plays Eternal Tag and throws up on people?"

 

Hiding behind his rock, two former Fraccion sighed.  "We used to be so cool." Pesche wept, nostalgia overcoming him.  "They used to call me the Fricción Fracción."

 

"Uh, no, you called yourself that, yaknow..." Dondochakka reminded him.  "I really miss the Las Noches food, friend."

 

"Tousen's Hueco Hotpot..."

 

"Cero Surprise for pudding..."  They heaved another shared heartfelt sigh.

 

Ichigo crawled dizzily around his rock just so he could hit them both on the head.  "You have _got_ to be bullshitting me," he croaked.

 

Pride wounded and egos thoroughly stung, the two Hollows retaliated by promptly bursting into...tears.  "We'll show you!" threatened Pesche, pointing down at Ichigo whose eyes were now spiralling from giddiness.  "We have a grudge against the Eighth, uh what is he these days, the Fifth Espada!"

 

"We're gonna take personal revenge, see what I mean?" growled Dondochakka, sounding alarmingly more like a mafia don than ever.  He punched his fist into the meaty palm of his other hand.  "We'll use _that_ attack."

 

"Yeah, yeah, _that_ one," agreed Pesche Guatiche fervently.  "Then you'll be sorry you ever doubted us, Itsygo!"  But he wasn’t listening.

 

Ichigo truly believed his concussion had caused him to hallucinate.  Was Nel… _kissing_ Nnoitra?!

 

**o)0(o**

 

Instead of dodging the point blank attack like any sane person would attempt to do, Nel had darted forwards and seemingly head butted the Quinta Espada. 

 

"Shit," spat Jiruga.  "I forgot about your little speciality, Neliel!"  He referred to ‘Cero Doblé’, the unique ability to consume and ricochet an attack – usually with one of her own added in.

 

Before it had even fully developed, the woman had opened her mouth and swallowed his yellow Cero whole.  And now she was munching it distractedly, like a horse chews the cud.  "Eehh, you're right..." she mumbled, trying not to part her lips and let it escape.  "You really have grown much more powerful."

 

"Of course I did, you skank."

 

Leaning in close again, close enough to make the misogynist wince, she pursed her lips.  The Cero swelled out, she was a kid blowing bubblegum; and the bubble of condensed explosive energy popped forcefully in his face.  Dripping blood, he lashed out at her blindly.  He only hit an echo.  Sonido had already taken her far away.

 

Holding out her zanpakuto for a second time, she gave him one final warning before unleashing her Resurrección.  "You have clawed your way to being the Quinta Espada, Nnoitra Jiruga.  So allow me to jog your faded memory.  I am Neliel Tu Oderschvank, the Tres Espada.  And I have _never_ been defeated by the likes of you, whom is not even a warrior."  Eyes steely above the red stripe of her natural war paint, the woman released her true form. 

 

"Declare..."

 

A vast expanding sphere of yellow-green energy surrounded her, churning the white sands into the black sky.

 

"Gamuza!"

 

**o)0(o**

 

Four widely-stanced hooves thudded into the ground, soft shockwave sending a thrill through her body.  After so many months of unknowing imprisonment in a tiny, powerless, child's body...she glorified in the sensation of her true form.

 

It was such a shame that arrancars kept their real selves locked away for so much of the time.  But she could tell her reiatsu was still weak and small, and that full power could not be maintained for anything over a few minutes.

 

It would have to be enough.

 

As the glowing green reiatsu and dust it had kicked up cleared, Neliel could see the mismatched group of humans and shinigamis staring at her in awe and surprise.  The short dark one was healing the Quincy, distractedly, and the rest were fixated fully upon this unexpected Espada duel.  Most importantly, she had spotted her two Fracción behind the enraged Nnoitra.  They were gesturing wildly, and it was either a highly important message…or they were playing charades.

 

Nnoitra witnessed his ancient enemy morph into a proud and rampant centaur, disgusted.  It was sickening that this female, furthermore this recently-enough _baby_ thought she could still defeat him as easily as in the past.  He knew he couldn’t take her lightly, but it would be insulting to take her seriously.  No matter how many of his weak points she already knew, no matter how much experience she had in combat against him, he just wanted to ignore the fact that the antelope woman knew his fighting style inside out.  It was too irksome to admit.

 

But not admitting it would be fatal.  In compromise, he settled on squashing her like a horsefly in his released form.  It would be a mocking display of how powerful the Espada had become in her absence.  Rather than an admission that she was still a threat.

 

 _I am the strongest_.

 

She had seared and peeled back his vaunted steel skin with the advantages of surprise and close range firing; nevertheless her lead would soon be over.

 

 _I am the strongest_.

 

“Pray,” slurred Nnoitra; weighted down by his heavy golden reiatsu until the tipping point into his true form would allow his physical body to keep up with his spiritual brawn.  “Sa-”

 

Neliel’s hooves kicked him in the face, all the power of a Privaron Espada’s hind legs rammed into his neck with a sickening snap.  Slammed against the white wall of the castle, he staggered and swore.

 

“I told you the Espada were five times stronger than before, bitch!  There is no way you can defeat me!”

 

“Every next rank in the Espada is at least as strong again as the last.  There were five ranks between us, and I was five times more powerful than you.  If our level is now equal, then only the better warrior will win.”  She glanced again at her once and future Fracción, their plot finally becoming clear.  As Nnoitra approached, her centaur half pranced briefly to warm up before she shot into a gallop of blinding speed.  “Estampida!”

 

Blurring into several echoes of herself with an incredible Sonido, the woman herded her enemy away from the wall and corralled him in the centre of their impromptu battlefield.  The ground shook.  Every time he attempted to resurrect his real body she would lash out and distract him from his purpose.  He was beginning to get really, really pissed off.

 

Then there was finally an opening.  The heifer had taken a run up, hefting her double-ended lance in a bone-armoured hand.  Waiting until vibrant green energy spiralled around its point, she threw it like a javelin.

 

“Lanzador Verde!”

 

“Pray; Santa Teresa!”

 

The lethal drill, driven by a whirl of emerald reiatsu, cut through the air in a flash.  It spun to a useless halt on Nnoitra’s reborn hierro skin.  He looked down at the weapon as if it were no more than a blunt stick to him, which was the truth.  Brushing it aside, he sneered.  “Too late, Nel Tu.”

 

“For you, perhaps;” she replied in her soft, child-like voice.  And only then did he realise what was happening behind him.

 

All of her attacks until now had been diversions.

 

Those two pathetic Fracción of hers, even more wretched than Tesla, had been moulding an attack in deadly unison for all this time.  The smaller was sat atop the large, and their grudge against him for ripping off their faces must have felt pretty damn raw ever since for them to have prepared such a surprising retaliation.

 

Hovering in the scorched air before them was a vast sphere of their respective lemon yellow and amethyst purple reiatsus.  Nnoitra wasn’t worried in the slightest until the energies converged into a massively volatile orb of white lightning.

 

“Cero Sincrético!”

 

He ceased his pre-emptive blocking and ran, dodging by a hairsbreadth the pale blast of crackling, swirling Cero that sizzled past him.  Livid, the Quinta Espada flash stepped behind the laughable pair who had just endangered his very life.  Extending all six of his praying mantis arms, he cricked his neck under the weight of his crescent moon crown, giving them a short moment to cower before their demise.

 

A sextet of black, talon-bladed axes scythed down.

 

“Idiot,” gasped Pesche Guatiche, sprinting away with the speed and stamina of one accustomed to Eternal Tag marathons.  “Gloating is the enemy of success!”

 

Dondochakka followed close behind, a gash in the back of his polka dot jumpsuit the cost of tardiness.  “Neliel-sama is still behind you, donchaknow!”

 

He looked over his shoulder and almost flinched in horrific understanding.  There was no scarred landscape behind him from the passage of the synchronised Cero.  Only the sombre form of Neliel Tu Oderschvank, former Tres Espada.

 

The eye sockets of her skull mask were glowing; the ridged ram-horns quivering with pent up energy.  She wore a grimace of concentration.  With each passing millisecond the condensing power in her throat jerked her head further and further back.  Her speech was stilted and painful.

 

“G…”

 

Nnoitra leapt out of her range, yet she simply turned her neck and stepped with him.  She was clenching her gauntleted fists over her mouth, biting back the explosion until it was ready.

 

“Gran Rey Cero Treblé!” declared the centaur; pounding down all four chamois legs just to keep from being blown away by her own attack.  Nel stretched her jaws open and roared.

 

The flare blinded everyone in the area, seared the sky, melted the sand to glass and birthed the first heat haze the chill desert had ever known.  It faded slowly with the acrid stench of burnt flesh.  A ripple of warmth spread out from the detonation zone, charred smoke buffeting invisibly against the black sky.

 

In his silicon grave, Nnoitra hissed; let go of the ruined battleaxes.  His words were as broken as the rest of him.  “You couldn’t win on your own, then, you fucking failure.  What happened to all…your retarded chivalry?”  His nerves were still on fire.  His mouth was filling with something thicker than water.

 

Neliel stared up at the steely crescent moon hanging low in the starless night.  She reminded him of her earlier speech.  “There are no morals, especially in a battle between the damned.”

 

“I am not damned!” screamed Nnoitra, choking on his own blood.  “I am not damned!!  I am the strongest, and I will become the ruler of this whole place!”

 

“And then what?” asked Nel laconically.

 

“I am not damned!” shrieked the dying arrancar.  Hearing that desperate declaration made Renji finally realise why Hollows fought so maniacally.  They were warring against their own despair.  He shared a heavy glance with Rukia.  Hollows existed in a hell world indeed. 

 

“ _I am not damned_!”

 

“Not anymore, I pray,” stated Neliel Tu Oderschvank as the violent fiend fell still, without the slightest ceremony or transition between the screams of the dying and the silence of the dead.  The sombre victor cantered to the side of the molten glass pit and leaned down to retrieve her lance.  Already fat sparks of spiritual matter were beginning to disintegrate from the Quinta’s corpse.

 

“Two equal opponents with only their individual instinct to separate them.  It’s King and Horse, Nnoitra Jiruga.”

 

Ichigo registered these words with a sense of unease.  The concept of King and Horse – did all Hollows share it?  And did even this proud, moral Neliel have a human soul cruelly subdued within?

 

“Where is your Hollow hole, Nel?” he asked, wondering if perhaps she too had undergone a similar battle of wills, as he and his pale double had.

 

“We can never predict the result of the Hougyoku,” she informed him.  “I…do not have a Hollow hole.”

 

“Did you…have to make a choice?  Or fight for…something?”  Ichigo had no idea how to word it without letting slip just what kind of psychotic alter-ego was hiding within his soul.  His friends might know the Hollow was there, but god forbid they learn what the Hollow was really _like_ – just inches away from ruling him.

 

Neliel stared into the middle distance.  Perhaps it held her memories.  “A very long time ago, my heart lost a battle, and I was consumed by grief and loneliness and hunger.  But this time, I believe the heart won.  So I do not know what I truly am, if it is Plus or Minus or both or neither.”

 

“Human.”  Chad spoke quietly.  He seemed lost in thought himself.  “Hollows may lack reason and empathy, but we are still...” he paused, realising what he had just said, and clenched his fists loosely.  “We are still all humans, here.”

 

He wanted it to be true, because the way his powers were settling down in a new and stronger alignment was starting to worry him.  He was adapting to the Hueco Mundo environment…and it was improving him.

 

“Anyway!” cheered the green-haired Espada, interrupting the morbid silence.  “Let’s go do whatever we’re meant to be doing!”

 

Ichigo coughed guiltily.  He had only just realised that Nel had never been told why they had come here.  As they filed into the gaping rift in the wall of Las Noches, Kurosaki began to explain.

 

There was a _POP!_ behind them.

 

“Umm, Itsygo?” ventured a tiny voice.  “I shwank again…”

**o)0(o**

 

**Bloomake!**

 

_Arrancar Encyclopaedia_

**o)0(o**

 

Neliel: I wonder what would bring Itsygo to Hueco Mundo anyway...in all my afterlife, I have never seen a shinigami in this place........well, except Ashido.

Nnoitra:  Oh yeah, Ashido.

Tesla:  Well Ashido is just....

Hallibel:  Comes with the territory right...

Barragan: Little rat used to steal my food.

Aizen:  Who's Ashido?

Wonderwice:  Dude....do you know nothing?

 

**o)0(o**

 

**Chapter Notes:** _Last chapter I forgot to explain for the benefit of the manga-only readers that Ashido Kano was an anime only filler character, but special because he was meant to be in the manga too.  He was also freaking cool, because he looked like he’d just jumped out of a Ghibli film or two – namely, ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds’ for the Menos Forest; and ‘Princess Mononoke’ for his fur coat and masks.  And yes, in the anime: Rocks Fell, Ashido Died._

_As for this chapter, ‘Estampida’ means Stampede, and I changed Nel’s reiatsu colour to yellow-green because her attack is called ‘Lanzador Verde’._

_Nnoitra’s Santa Teresa release refers to a praying mantis, and Don and Pesch really do have a super synchronised Cero._

_Alliriyan~*_

 


End file.
